Consequences of not flying final leg?
 

I have a dilemma. On a DONE* my final legs are DEL-LHR-MAD-GIB, with an overnight in Madrid. I am all ticketed (paper). Now Iberia has changed its schedule, so there is no longer any flight on the day I am ticketed MAD-GIB, only the day prior and the day after. If I move my itinerary back a day, I will have to give up a day in Delhi, which I really don't want to do. If I move forward a day, I will miss my hotel reservation in Granada. I would just as soon just get an Air Europa flight from Madrid to Malaga on my planned date and not use the final MAD-GIB coupon. But I know that I am supposed to end up where I started (GIB). My only real concern is whether I will forfeit all the miles I have accumulated on the DONE*. Anybody got any advice or experience with this? Thanks.

I haven't tried this particular routing, but I have not used the last leg on a ticket literally hundreds of times and never had any problem with mileage credit still being earned on earlier segments. In fact, I've never had any problem of any kind doing this.

Same experience here. Never a problem.

Same here. I've been credited miles for the miles I've flown, and not for the final leg seat I didn't sit in.

The risk of not using the last leg of a xONEx is not the risk of using your miles. The risk is that the issuing carrier can theoretically come back to you and ask for the fare difference between the xONEx and separate tickets for the not completed RTW. No idea whether any airline has ever done that but in theory they could.

I've never heard anyone on FT ever report being penalised for not using the last leg of a XONEx.

I recently reissued a CX issued paper ticket (xONEx) with the last few coupons as OPEN. It was all the OPEN coupons that I wanted reissued. CX could find no record of any previous CX flights on the itinerary, nor indeed the first flight (on CX) which triggered the 12 months validity for the itinerary. I ended up showing them the BP stubs and FF print out to identify when I did the flights.

Therefore, I would have high confidence that if you were dealing with OPEN paper tickets, the last coupon could be "lost" and that would be the end of the story.

If an e-ticket - that may be a different issue?

I've not flown the final segment a number of times. My schedule simply hasn't worked out to get back to that airport in time to fly it. There's never been any repercussion.

I also have not used the final leg of my AONE and absolutely no problem...

Well, it seems that Iberia has solved my problem for me. Apparently, when they cancelled the MAD-GIB flight, they put us on a flight to Malaga, that being their next-closest airport. They didn't notify us, but I spoke to a BA agent today who spotted this. Since Malaga is much better for us anyway, what IB sees as an inconvenience to us is actually a great favor. And since this was all their doing, I certainly will not worry about any penalties. Gotta love it. Thanks for all your replies. :)