KLM - missing final leg of flight?
 

We are due to travel to the Galapagos in April. We booked this through Celebrity cruises early last year and they told us to call them nearer the time so that we could organise the flights that were included in the costing.
The flights are all KLM and Heathrow to AMS, then connecting AMS to Quito.
We wanted to change them so that we could spend a couple of days in Amsterdam on the outward journey.
Celebrity tell me that they are no longer able to supply this option as it was withdrawn last summer
My question is...can we miss the final flight coming home (AMS to Heathrow) and we can then spend a couple of days in Amsterdam without invalidating our future flights.
I've heard that some airlines frown on this and are starting to sue people over lost revenue.
We would purchase Easyjet flights for a couple of days later to go back to Gatwick.
Any thoughts or advice?
TIA

The problem with your plan is not with future flights; it will severely impact your current ticket.

Your bags will be checked all the way through to LHR. If you request to have them "short-checked" just to AMS, there will be a fee of €275 per bag in order to have the bags delivered to you in Amsterdam.

If you decide to simply not board your flight from AMS-LHR, your bags will be offloaded but will not be returned to you without a great deal of fuss and bother and delay - which will invariably involve paying either the fee of €275 per bag, or the newly-calculated fare for the open-jaw ticket you actually flew. This course of action also greatly increases the chances that your bags get lost, or are not returned for a considerable amount of time.

I would strongly advise you against simply "missing" your final flight; it will cause you problems with your luggage and will cost you a considerable amount of money, as well as time and hassle dealing with your luggage at Schiphol.

If you want to spend a few days in Amsterdam, then either:

• travel back without any checked luggage; in this case, you can safely miss your AMS-LHR flight, without consequences now or in the future, but you will have to arrange a new AMS-LHR ticket, separately and at an extra charge;
• arrange in advance that this ticket is changed before you fly, such that you have a stopover in AMS on the way home built into this ticket; this will require extra payment;
• plan a separate trip to Amsterdam at some other point in the future

Thank you so much for the detailed and very helpful reply!
We will stick with just the organised tickets then and travel to Amsterdam another time
Many thanks

Interesting to know that some people are willing to go cruising again.
I understand that some cruise companies are trying to restart in August, but it is extremely doubtful that they will be able to do it before 2021. And there are rumors that some cruise line might default.
And as you know Ecuador is severely hit by SARS-cov-2

Celebrity must be desperate to get clients and be ready to be flexible when booking your tickets. Similarly there is a chance that KL will be flexible. For various reasons, longhaul leisure travel will not have returned to normal by April 2021.

We booked this 18 months ago and it's not until next April...we just wanted to get the flight section sorted
We've cancelled our cruises for this year

One workaround..... change the AMS-LHR flight to the following day with an under 24 hour connection. That way your bags will be Checked only to AMS.

KLM doesn’t return bags on sub-24 hour connections, even if there’s an overnight involved.

I had no problem receiving my bag in AMS on an overnight connection, LHR-AMS-XXX

I don’t doubt you did, but KLM states the 24 hour rule (or €275 fee) pretty clearly.

I certainly wouldn’t be willing to risk it, as you’re at the whim of the check in agent.

From KLM website (bolding is mine):

Baggage and transferring

If the ticket you bought for your trip includes a transfer on a connecting flight in less than 24 hours, your check-in baggage will usually be sent to your final destination. The baggage claim tag that you receive when dropping off your baggage always states your bag’s final destination.(...)

When transferring at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol or Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, depending on your ticket conditions, it may be possible to collect your baggage, however possibly against a fee.

I find it more ambiguous than clear.

Asking KLM in writing about overnight connection might be the solution.

This is all a bit academic now; if the OP was able to change her ticket so that it had an overnight stop, she would also have been able to change her ticket so that it had a stop of more than just one night (if she deemed just one night as being insufficient). As reported, the cruise line was not interested in looking at changing the flights at this vast remove.

However, if/when changing the ticket became a viable option, she would have changed the ticket in a manner that would not have needed her to "drop" the final flight, and therefore the issue of baggage disappears (one should always carry in one's carryon what is needed for at least one overnight stay, on the assumption that your luggage may be delayed).

The KLM website previously stated that overnight stays at AMS allowed checked luggage to be short-checked to AMS; it no longer clearly states that (though reading between the lines, if you force your stopover to be greater than 24 hours, you should be good).

But be in no doubt that KLM will seek a fee for short-checking a bag where they decide that you have no automatic right to having your bag delivered at AMS.

The danger is real indeed, as before it stated clearly that overnight connection meant shot checking was allowed.

But the new wording (usually, possibly) does not say that it is impossible or forbidden. It creates uncertainty and this is not good. And very inconvenient for people who legitimately have an overnight connection.