This may be in the wrong forum so please feel free to move it to an appropriate location.
Is it allowable to purchase a roundtrip ticket and then not use the return segment? Are there any penalties or repercusions?
A roundtrip ticket is considerably cheaper than one way and on my return I am driving to another location to take my return flight. I am able to find a good price one way for the return flight but the outbound flight is much more expensive ($300 plus) for one way.
Thank you in advance for your help. The vast amount of knowledge of Flyertalkers has provided an education for me over the past years.

No it's not allowed. Arethere likely to be any repercussions if you do it once? no.

If you want to pretend you it wasn't planned, when you get back, call the airline and tell them you had a really bad ear infection and couldn't fly so you drove. They will tell you the return portion is nonrefundable and then you throw it away. Or you could just throw it away and never say anything. Doing it once is unlikely to ever be noticed. There is no law that says you have to get on a plane. You can change your mind.

With the current 'use or lose' policies, you can argue that it's actually allowed by the airlines. You booked a round trip, you intended to take a round trip, you missed your return segment, and now your return ticket is worthless and cancelled.

Just don't make a habit of it.

btw, also look at open jaw tickets. It may be even cheaper to buy your return from another city, or returning to a different city.

Before doing that, mscoachung, why not consider an open jaw: A--->B and C--->A using half of a RT fare between both cities?

Of course, the itinerary would have to qualify for an open jaw - but U havn't given us enuf information to make that determination. In this regard, it helps if one is very specific both in the info given inside the post, and in the nature of the post itself - via a slightly more SPECIFIC Title - rather than generic, i.e. 'quick question' type of Title. FWIW, you'll prolly get more of a response specifically answering your inquiry that way. You could have done 'part of that' by advising us of the city-pairs involved.

Oh and BTW, if one buys a RT tkt the airline cannot make you fly the return, now can they? Oh well! You missed your flight! Or you changed your plans... and you were forced to buy another tkt. Sounds reasonably good to me.

This RT 'throw away' technique is used alot in Europe in markets where the OW fares are astronomical. Airlines don't particularly like it but, oh well. If concerned, you can always buy the RT on your FF program of choice, and do the return on a partner carrier (i.e. US/UA), giving the same FF number 4 both tkts.

BTW, welcome to FT.




[This message has been edited by tvl4free (edited 08-08-2003).]

I would not recommend booking an open jaw when doing throwaway ticketing. If a round trip is already significantly cheaper than a one way, isn't that enough savings for you?

If you give us the details of your trip, maybe we can help you out with more specific help.

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"Where's my money?" -- Pizza the Hutt

how do you guys find a cheap open jaw? there are thousands of possibilities, how do you find the cheapest?

you could just fly different airlines. If you're US-member, buy one ticket on USair and then another on UA. That should dramatically lower the suspicion level since its technically on two different airlines, but you'll still get the miles for it.

Just a thought...

[This message has been edited by civicmon (edited 08-08-2003).]