the ELM-DTW-MCO ticket is a "contract" between the OP and DL for air transportation between origin and destination

DL only serves DTW from ELM so questions about IROPS rerouting are moot

it's entirely up to the OP in terms of the ethics of using hidden-city ticketing

I think using the term fraud is a bit unfair. OP and the airline agreed to a contract with specific terms and conditions, including penalties for violation of the hidden city clause. Depending on how it's written, the airline may choose to enforce those penalties, if the OP violates that rule. The penalty could include forfeiture of ff account, monetary penalties, or ban on future services. If the OP wants to take that risk, it's OP's choice to make. I would not expect the airline to be sympathetic to your plight, and if irrops occur, OP would be in an even worse situation.

Thanks for starting my weekend with a hearty guffaw.

And to add to the risk, if the airlines determines he has used a hidden city ticketing, the carrier has the right to charge him the original fare from ELM-DTW, and this will have a higher probability of happen when he calls the carrier to cancel his last leg, and to have the RT changed to drop the first leg on the RT.

All the response so far from the OP is showing that he thinks this is common practices, and nearly all post on FTs on this subject on various forums states that one should not do it, as the carrier can imposed numerous actions or penalties, such as suspending your FF account, recalculating the charge, etc.

All response so far has stated "Don't do it", debating whether you should have the right to do it is a moot point.

Wouldn't two round-trips, throwing away the extra segment as well as the return, come out cheaper? If you don't put in your frequent flyer number you should be ok, although the moral qualms (if you have them) don't change. Throwing away the return of a round-trip (although not with a hidden city) is something that was obligatory at an agency I used to work with. It was in the day of printed tickets, and they didn't even bother giving the traveler the return coupon. Of course, things may have changed ...

I know this route and have flown it often, although my final destination is not Detroit. I am a newbie too, but as many of the experienced FT people above recommend, don't do this. If you purchased your ticket yesterday, you have 24 hours to cancel. Cancel it and rebook. I looked at some fares for the route you want and, of course it depends on when you want to fly but, the fare is 491 and up. Book a round trip and be safe.

This is the correct response. It answers the OP's question without the moralizing. If one wants to do a roundtrip hidden city trip to BBB, do this:

One-way ticket AAA-BBB-CCC and skip the BBB-CCC segment
One-way ticket BBB-AAA (not possible to hidden city the return)

If booked separately, skipping BBB-CCC does not cause the airline to cancel the return one-way flight.

You can't check luggage to BBB, except for an international trip where BBB is the arrival city for US customs.

This won't work because when the passenger tries to board in the hub city for his return, he will find that his ticket has been canceled because the first segment was not flown. This could have worked in the era of paper tickets, as you are remembering.

Double roundtrips can still theoretically be booked for the purpose of evading Saturday night stay requirements. However, a human travel agent is unlikely to cooperate with such a scheme. It also might be caught by the airline because the dual trips are visible in the passenger's record of upcoming trips. This does work, however, if the roundtrips are booked on DIFFERENT airlines.

Thanks everyone for your replies. What ended up happening is at the airport they simply dropped the last segment of the flight for me, for no additional charges. Though I wont do this again as it was kind of a pain, I saved around 700 dollars for my trip. Back to my capitalism point, it's really not something to laugh at, yet something to respect. I think that using common sense, a flight to Orlando should cost more than a flight 1 hour away, considering airline expenses. However, obviously pricing has nothing to do with mileage/gas, but only with competition/economics. I believe that what I practiced is capitalism, though I understand that I agree to a contract with the airlines when I purchase their product. Just as the airlines find "tricks" to charge more, being pricing more due to less competition per route or by charging for luggage, I have every right to find "tricks" that save me money (as long as it's not against US law, and as long as it doesnt hurt me), thus it's a free market. All in all, this trip taught me a lot, and I will always look to find what suits me best, in the air and on the ground

Thanks all for clarifying this for me, and happy flying!

Would you mind explaining to the audience what exactly happened?

Did you keep your original booked roundtip tickets?

Yep, basically they dropped B-C and C-B so I kept the roundtrip that I want. Granted that's probably because Ive always been a customer and had never done anything like that before.

Since you're so big on capitalism, consider supply and demand. Tickets to Orlando cost less because the supply is so much greater. Delta must compete against a lot of different airlines on flights to Orlando so the ticket prices are lower including Allegiant which flies the route for as low as $142 round trip. Delta is the only airline that offers non-stop ELM-DTW flights so supply is much tighter. That's how the price gets set. If they could sell ELM-MCO for $800 round trip they certainly would.

Did you look at USAirways for your trip? Looks like they have round trip ELM-DTW fares as low as $360. Of course you'll have to connect through Philly if you don't want to pay the premium to fly non-stop on delta.

You'd think but airline ticket prices are based off supply and demand and the market between city pairs. It's a lot like real-estate. The market is just as important as the direct cost; think about it - a 2,000 square foot house in the middle-of-nowhere Texas sells for a lot less than a house of the same size along the California coast. What happened here was you did not really buy an "Elmira - Detroit - Orlando" ticket - you bought an "Elmira - Orlando" ticket. What you are doing is taking advantage of the fact that the "Elmira - Orlando" ticket goes by way of Detroit. If the flight did not go by way of Detroit (say DL's hub was Pittsburgh and you had to go ELM-PIT-DTW), you would not be able to engage in this practice to get to Detroit; you would be stuck buying an ELM-DTW ticket to ensure you get to Detroit. I'm not getting into the ethics of whether hidden city is moral or immoral; just merely explaining how airline tickets are market based; not direct-cost based.

Just for future reference, it's not an issue with this example because DL only goes through DTW from Elmira, but hidden city ticketing does come with risks - one of those risks is that the airline has no obligation to transport you through the hub in which you plan to terminate, but only a resposibility to get you to your ticketed destination. For example, if you were booked BUF-DTW-MCO and planning to get off in DTW, and then the BUF-DTW flight gets cancelled, DL is free to reroute you via any of its hubs it serves from BUF to get you to MCO. For this reason, it's recommended that anyone planning to engage in "Hidden City" use cities close to their planned destination, such as FNT for DTW or CHA for ATL so that if you are rerouted, you're still close to your actual destination. Also, don't plan to check any bags - they will be routed to your final ticketed destination.

The other risk (which has been covered in this discussion); technically the airline has the right to go back and charge you the fare for the route you ended up flying rather than the route you were ticketed. If you keep your hidden city tickets to a minimum, you can get away with it; make a frequent occurence, and the airline might come after you.

1) Doesn't exist.

2) Invoked by the lazy.

3) Thanks for the giggle.