I'm looking to book a one-way flight from either Milwaukee or Chicago (MKE - ORD - MDW) to Evansville, IN (EVV) on the weekend of March 12-14 to pick up a car. Because of time constraints, I have to make the flight between late Friday evening and Sunday morning, leaving time for an 8 hour drive back by late Sunday evening. Does anyone know any tricks to finding a reasonably priced one-way ticket? What happens if you book a cheaper round-trip ticket and never use the second half of the ticket? Any advice would be appreciated.

If you buy a round-trip and only fly one-way there are no legal actions the airline can take against you.

However, they COULD freeze your frequent flyer mile account, but such actions are rare for first-time offenders.

You are best advised to simply call up reservations and advise them you won't be flying due to "unforseen circumstances" and that you won't be rebooking at that time.

Buy the cheapest round-trip you can, which usually includes a Saturday-night stay.

Just don't use your FF numbers. You're only giving up 500 miles anyways.

Remember it doesn't have to be a round trip--an open jaw can be even cheaper. For example, Chicago-Evansville + St. Louis-Chicago might well be much cheaper (I didn't check) because of competition (especially from Southwest) in the St. Louis-Chicago market.

Lots of people miss their flights due to traffic jams, bad weather, etc.

I've have done this so many times (always with FF numbers in the booking) that I've lost track.

You have nothing to worry about.

often done - never any problem.

from the early days of FlyerTalk, here one of the guerilla-tips of a very good friend of mine:

1) I book (deep discounted, non refundable, non-changeable) roundtrip
2) after arrival I go to the ticketcounter of that airline telling them that unfortunatly I have to change my return-flight
3) the airline will say: sorry, not changeable
4) Then I very politly ask them to cancel my return-flght as I don't want to create trouble to the airline to be a 'no-show', and ask also: how much they will kindly refund me for not taking the return-trip
5) They will politly tell me, that unfortunately they can't refund anything
6) I then will ask them to kindly, at least, credit me the miles for that already paid return-flight, which they will also politly refuse to do
7) they will feel very sorry for my situation, and I will say good-by with tears in my eyes ...

[This message has been edited by Rudi (edited Jan 19, 2004).]

Great strategy!

Almost moving me to tears !

Rudi, I could learn a lot from you! You should write a book: "A gentleman's guide to travel strategies".

If you elect not to use your FF #, you actually will lose 1000 points if you are flying AA. 500 for the trip and 500 for traveling the one direction. AA splits each direction up into 500 each way for a total of 1000 points for round trip.

ATA flies from both MKE (via MDW) and MDW to SBN and IND. ATA readily sells 1W tickets for reasonable prices. If either of these is close enough to Evansville for your purposes, that may save you the trouble of the strategies discussed above.

If you are getting a RT and throwing away the return, AA flies NS from ORD-EEV (Sat-Sat) for $223. If you don't find a better one-way fare than that, I would go to Priceline and put in a $155 bid and see if they beat it. Hotwire will do it for $214 and Pricline usually beats them.

Well I threw in a RT CHI-EVV for March 13th, returning April 10th. Came back $274 on AA. Orbitz didn't show anything lower using their flexible date matrix display. Not sure if others have found better.

Now for my advice: The airline does not care that you are throwing away your return. You aren't using your return. Who says it has to be a round trip ticket? Screw buying CHI-EVV RT, buy an open jaw.

CHI-EVV on 3/13, returning SDF-CHI on 4/10 prices out to $185 on AA.com. Play around with open jaws. You'll find the cheapest fare there, unless you are in a market where there is a LCC who publishes cheap OW fares (like WN or FL).

Edited to add that I didn't notice that HomelessScientist gave the same advice earlier

[This message has been edited by whlinder (edited Jan 19, 2004).]

My suggestions:

1. Fly Southwest Airlines Chicago Midway to Louisville for $39 on Saturday or $44 Friday or Sunday; have someone pick you up there. Today is the last day to reserve these one way fares.

2. Rent a car in Chicago and drop it off in Evansville within 24 hours. Try the major rental companies, some don't charge a drop fee when you return the car to a different city. Should run around $50-80.

3. Greyhound departs Chicago at 8:30 AM, arrives Evansville 4:50 PM, costs $49 with a 7 day advance purchase.

Thanks for all the help. The Open Jaw sounds like an interesting way to work this. Are there any rules or tricks I need to know about booking Open Jaw Tickets?

LMAO