Multiple carriers
 

With the masses of deals between certain city pairs I was wondering what happens in the below circumstance.

For instance
If I fly between a to b on (x airline)
Then b to c on (y airline)
C to b ( y airline)
And then b to a (x airline)

And book ticket through a third party would the no show rule not apply ie I could then skip the x airline flights and only take the y airline flights which is more beneficial to me without risking cancelling all flights?

Thoughts?

Asked and answered myriad times over. It's called Hidden City Ticketing.
Suggest you try a search "hidden city" or similar.
One of said myriad threads http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...ey-flight.html
The answer is always the same: skip the first leg and the rest of your itinerary will automatically be canceled.

I appreciate what you are saying but isn't that when its all the same carrier how can one airline enforce a cancellation on another airlines ticket?

Because you are on a single PNR/ticket and most times flying part of an alliance. Miss the first flight and the ticket has not been "activated" and all the rest of the flights are canceled. Same if you miss a middle flight.

But hey, go ahead and try it and report back here.

Right ok that does make sense but if the carriers are unrelated? For example Virgin Atlantic and British airways if that is the case?

If you book a ticket like this on a third party website, there is a possibility that you are not on 1 ticket/1 PNR. Some third party websites will issue more than one ticket if that is cheaper. If that's the case, you might get away with it but you'd need to be sure that it's not 1 ticket/1 PNR.

If they are all on one ticket it makes absolutely no difference if there are different airlines involved.

You can check to see if you were issued a single ticket number or not, in the documentation you receive after booking. Note the difference between the ticket number and the PNR (or reservation number). The ticket number will be 13 digits and the PNR is a 6 character alpha/number. With two airlines you would expect to have two PNRs but that doesn't mean you have two tickets.

While it's possible your travel was issued as more than one ticket, I'd be surprised if that were the case with the construction you cite in the OP. But check your ticket info to be certain.

As noted above your question is not novel, and is asked at least once weekly it seems. Search in this forum and also the Travel Buzz forum if you'd like to read up more on hidden city ticketing Q&As.

Since VS has almost no shorthaul network they use BA to provide feed, this will almost certainly be one ticket especially if the overall price is cheaper than booking the flights separately.

Am I right in assuming you're looking at DUB-LHR-XXX?

There is a chance that you could board the second connecting flight without taking the origin flight, but the ticket should be cancelled due to your no-show. You could end up at your destination and find your return segments are cancelled and you'd need to buy an expensive one way ticket.

But by all means, give it a try and report back.

This is true, but some websites will show when this occurs. Also if it is two tickets then generally it will simply be the sum of its parts and so adding the extra segments will not lower the overall price.

Thank you to everybody for the info I'm not exactly knowledgeable so thank you for people for taking the time to answer and being gentle. I appreciate it.