Hidden City ticketing
 

Hi all

Wanted to get views / opinions on this.

I have the option to depart from A - B and then return B - A - C which is a lot cheaper than a straight A-B return.

I don't intend to check in bags so can I just drop the A-C leg on my return journey.

Its a European airline.

What are A, C, and C?

What is the carrier?

Without very specific information, you will get generalized answers. None of those are anything you ought to depend on.

General consensus is that if you do not make a habit of doing this you should be ok. Just also be aware that in case of IRROPS the airline could re-route you to C and that may not be via A.

Not sure why A C and C are relevant in answering the question?

The airline in question does not fly from B to C, so it is with a partner airline. But the ticket is essentially from A - B outbound and B - A - C inbound with the carrier operating A - B and B - A and B - C is operated by another carrier. But its one ticket.

Thanks for this. As per my previous answer, the airline in question doesn't actually fly to C, so that couldn't happen really. If the flight was delayed then presumably they'd just arrange to alter the onward connecting flight which I wouldn't be taking anyway.

What is IRROPS?

Irregular operations, as in there being a mechanical or weather delay that could affect routing and potentially cause delay or misconnect to your end destination, regardless if this was the intended one or not.

Details can help with nuances in particular circumstances/airlines that may affect your decision. The airline isn't going to find you out and hunt you down based on a Flyertalk posting!

Just because a partner carrier is operating the last leg doesn't necessarily preclude a rerouting due to IRROPS. It's possible a cancelation on the "B to A' return segment could result in you rerouted via that same partner - or even a different partner airline - instead, and not touching "A" at all. It's probably not a huge chance in most cases may still be possible. Knowing what airlines and routes involved might provide a better guesstimate of the risk of that occurring.

I see. Thanks for your comments. Its not really a risk for me - if it happened it wouldn't be a huge issue as the airport is only one hour flight from where I want to actually go. So worst case scenario of flying there is not a massive issue, just inconvenience.

If the mysterious airline in question (why are you being coy?) flies from B to C, though, it won't take much of an operational hiccup for them to put you on a B-C nonstop.They'll think they're doing you a favor. You'll need a reason why you want to go via A. (Happened to me once. AA offered me an LHR-BOS non-stop instead of my existing LHR-ORD-BOS routing. I told the LHR Flagship Lounge agent that I wanted the extra miles. They don't put dummies in Flagship Lounges. She got it instantly.)

You may not see why these are relevant, but as you can see they are.

Thus, the answer to your questions are:
1. Depending on where A-B and C are, this may or may not be a problem, logistical or otherwise.
2. Depending on what you mean by "partner airline" and which airlines they are, this may or may not be a problem, logistical or otherwise.

Its really not relevant as the airline does not fly from B-C - so there is absolutely no risk that the airline would therefore reroute me from B-C as they don't fly that route. And even if they did it wouldn't really be that much of an issue.

I think the point is being missed - I have no concerns about being rerouted or about luggage - more about the principal of what I'm doing.

There's lots of threads about the ethics of hidden city ticketing so no need to start a new one.

It's not surprising. Every travel hacking intro I know will tell you to try not just 1x/4x, but also 3x (the case of the OP) and 1x. 2x seem to be suggested less frequently.

And, for the OP's question: I think in Europe, it's fairly safe to do hidden-city ticketing. Stipulations by the airlines that prohibit it may actually be legally void.

Unless it involves LH which recently sued a passenger for the fraud. While it has temporarily lost for apparently having filed in the wrong court, I would not be quite so quick as to make generalizations regarding regions such as "Europe". I am not suggesting that OP's mystery carriers will sue him, simply that broad generalizations are not useful for individual circumstances.

There is nothing in the contract of carriage or in the law that impose on anybody to take any flight. In addition the prevailing law in Germany allows out of sequence use of tickets. The fiction that a flight from A to B, change the airplane and the flight from B to C is one flight is just a fiction and most courts will see them for what they are: two flights.
In fact the whole charade is organized and orchestrated by airlines. It is not negotiated to any degree.
The Lufthansa claim of fraud is as bogus as it gets, regardless of any merit of the largest European German airline lawyers filling in a wrong court in their home country - where are the damages? The airline most certainly cannot show that the airplane burned more fuel because it was lighter? Or can they prove that they did not seat anybody else in the empty seat?
How about price gauging by the airline pricing two flights cheaper than just one of the two flight? Where is the discussion or ethics or law on that?
Anyway - last year I bought 9 Lufthansa tix. Lufthansa defrauded me on 7 of them and refused to correct. When legally challenged - Lufthansa provided copies of documentation from different year, with different pax names and different routing.
On the other hand out of many instances of flight cancellation/irregularity LH was the only airline painless in honoring the EU-261 obligations

What has this to do with this thread. Even if what you have written is 100% correct (which is is not), that has nothing to do with OP's question, which is a practical one.

Just as German consumers learned when that country required that tickets be sold which may be flown out of order, such tickets were put up for sale in very short order. But, they are vastly more expensive than "ordinary" tickets. Thus, if asked the consequences of Germany's decision, one would practically say, "little or none."

That's not convincing.

There must have been thousands of hidden-city tickets without price recalculation by FTers alone. It's totally absurd to assign any significance to a single lawsuit which hasn't even been won considering the thousands of cases in which last legs have successfully been skipped without any penalty.

You mean a single complaint on FT.

My guess is that most people who get caught out don't come whine on public boards about getting caught.

That's not the issue. If something were to go wrong with the airline's A-B flight, they are likely to rebook you on a different routing, either direct A-C on another airline, or on a different routing such as A-X-C, given that you are presenting as a passenger who needs to get from A to C.

That said, the chances of this happening are slim to remote, and no European airline is going to come after you for departing the A-B-C flight at B.