Skipping the middle leg of a 3 part flight?
 

Hello, I managed to secure a crazy ticket which will be really good for my FB Miles. Path is BHX-AMS-BRU-JFK with the first leg landing at 15h00 in AMS, and the next 2 segments in the early morning.

I have some good friends in BRU so I was contemplating going there via train/plane on the same day, skipping the middle leg, and just catching the plane again in BRU the next morning. (although I will lose some XP for that segment, but oh well....)

However, I assume it's impossible to leave my luggage checked-in for the flight if I choose to deplane? Assuming I'm even allowed to skip the segment?
Flight was booked with dodgy OTA so change with KL pretty much guaranteed to be impossible.
However I would also be prepared to buy a one way AMS-BRU on the 16h55. Assuming I do that directly with KLM, would they be able to route my luggage through this new flight, just for the middle segment?

Wondering if anyone has ever tried :)

Otherwise I'll just have to spend a nice evening in Amsterdam :cool:

Many Thanks

This has nothing to do with your luggage. You must fly your ticket in segment order. If you no show for any segment, the remaining segments will be cancelled and retain whatever value they have under their fare rules. That will most typically be nothing.

Gotcha, will stick with the original plan. Cheers.

A Belgian court has today declared these fare rules null and void. The court ruled that AF-KL may not cancel a ticket if a pax doesn't fly one or more of the segments. Should the airline not comply, it will have to pay damages of € 2,500.-- per day.

Source (in Dutch)

A similar court case is pending in the Netherlands.

Johan

I wonder if the consumer organisation realises that this means the cheaper tickets originating from a foreign airport to the hub of the airline will be a thing of the past?

There have been similar decisions in Germany and Italy. As always with those cases, however, the devil is in the detail. Just saying that a clause that results in the cancellation of the ticket if a sector is missed or is taken out of order is void as unfair does not necessarily mean that the passenger has the right to skip a segment at no cost and continue. The article you reference is very vague and does not contain enough information to give a clear sense of what was actually decided in the case.

I found the website of the court concerned, but unfortunately the judgment is not available there.

Johan

OK. A little bit more information from a Belgian newspaper here (in French). The argument seems to be one of insufficient clarity in the contract as to what the clause means rather than objecting to the principle of requiring passengers to fly segments in succession per se.

Nice unexpected update, thanks!

I'm not ballsy enough to risk it so will stick to original plan.

I never wanted to cheat the system tbh - merely to skip a leg on my own dime or even pay extra for it.

Fyi after this I contacted my "dodgy" OTA and they actually kindly contacted KLM to see if I could change the middle leg for a fee. KLM replied they would only change me to an AMS-JFK direct but not willing to change only the AMS-BRU flight.

Guess they don't really like people who book long winded xp runs... so in the end Im sticking to my guns and planning to enjoy all the lounges :)

Well... apart from the aspire bhx becsuse that one is hard to enjoy...

... especially as, with your itinerary, Belgian courts would be unlikely to have jurisdiction so you would in all likelihood have to argue your case before a UK court if you had to litigate.

It would appear so. However, the very last sentence in the L'Echo article states that the court has ordered AFKL to no longer enforce the no show clause. I suppose that means that until the airline changes its T&Cs and reformulates the offending clause so that it complies with the court's standards for clarity, pax cannot be penalized for skipping legs.

Johan

Indeed.