Doc Savage

Hidden city ticketing is when a fare from city A to city B to city C is cheaper than city A to city B, for whatever reasons. Sometimes people figure this out, and simply get off the plane with their carryon luggage at city B and throw away the flight to city C. Most airlines don't like this, but it seems that there is rarely any consequence to the passenger unless the passenger does it multiple times.

I think I've only read a thread or two on FT about anyone getting caught, one about guys in Texas who did it every Friday and got "escorted" to the connecting flight after pulling it off successfully for several months, and maybe one or two others. I recently saw someone claiming third hand that an acquaintance had their credit card dinged for the difference in fares.

Have you ever been "busted" for hidden city ticketing? If so, what happened to you?




Please, let's not make this thread about the "ethics" of the practice, there are plenty of others where each side can rant about that!

DaddyRabbit

Do not do this. It is stupid. DL will close your account.

Doc Savage

Do you have any firsthand experience? Trying to get real data, not third hand supposition.

lost*in*cyberspace

I did this once on a return from Europe. I was booked on a mistake UA ticket which required a routing through Canada on the return ticket, which dropped all the taxes and fees from the ticket price. The first US stop was at IAD, my home airport, so I simply exited the airport after going through customs/immigration rather than continuing to the flight to Canada.

This is not a problem if you don't make a habit of it and only do it on the return flight.

Mrp Alert

Flying Lh on a award ticket my travel plans had changed beyond muc and I was not flying my connecting flight. I told the agent at checkin that I would not be flying flight 2 and to interline my bag over to AB where I had bought a new connecting itinerary. As it was a free ticket, they didn't have an issue with it. On paid itineraries, If you don't make it a frequent occurrence, it will not be an issue. Be advised that if irrops occur, you may be rerouted to your ticketed destination and have to figure out how to get to where you wanted to end up. People miss flights all the time due to customs or other excuses including my favorite - gastrointestinal difficulties on arrival

OskiBear

About 5 years ago, I had a flight back to the US from LHR. I forgot the routing, but somehow it ended with me in PDX. I did manage an overnight connection at LAX.

Upon check-in, the agents asked me if I would prefer a more direct routing to PDX and I said that I needed to spend the night LAX so I booked it that way.

They seemed OK with that.

However, I think the standard assumption is to be prepared to be routed to your final booked destination.

The few times I've tried this, I've booked a WN award ticket from the final destination back to LAX just in case something happens. It's easy to cancel and have my points redeposited when I don't need it.

Steve M

It's almost certain that if you do this on the outbound of a round-trip ticket, all segments past the one you skip, including all of the return segments, will get cancelled. That's the most common way to get caught, as it happens more or less automatically.

Other than that, I agree with what others have said: it's unlikely you'll get caught or that anything will happen to you unless you make a regular practice of it.

Doc Savage

Did you ever have to use your backup ticket?

That is a foregone conclusion, IMO.

chx1975

For sure but if you do this, as the thread mentions, every Friday you will get a few odd looks

RustyC

Many, many years ago it was possible to find a fare like SDF-ATL-MCI on a WN match at $58 RT, get the boarding passes ahead of time and use only the ones you wanted, such as turning it into an ATL-MCI RT. You could even try to be really brazen and send in the unused ones for FF credit!

Those days are as long gone as the days of ads to sell tickets in the paper because of airlines not checking IDs. All that started around 1995 or so...I think the airlines wanted the government to be the heavy but were all too happy to comply. And this was well before 9/11.

The practice lives on in skipping the last flight, though. Would agree that it's not likely to cause problems as long as you're not chronic about it and don't call attention to yourself.

moondog

+1

Brobbel

You may look at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...-vs-497-a.html

Often1

Somewhere there's also a thread from last year about US doing this to people who did this a second time in a short period, can't remember whether it was 3 or 6 months. The sanction was apparently having one's account frozen. Nobody ever reported back on the ultimate consequence, e.g. account closed, penalty paid or whatever. I presume that post single operating certificate, AA & US will both do this, whatever this is.

pinniped

(1) A friend of mine has done it on DL a couple times - ticketed to GRR to get to DTW and ticketed to IND to get to CVG. Fairly low risk of a reroute since Delta would have a hard time getting you to either of those cities except through their hubs and, worst case, even if they stuck you on another airline, you could still get to Detroit or Cincy pretty easily from those cities.

(2) One time I was flying back from CDG to MCI via ORD on the back half of a typical coach ticket. I phoned United and asked about changing my ORD-MCI segment to spend the weekend in Chicago. The agent on the phone said my change fee was $250...but a new one-way ticket was only $70. She sold me the new itin herself and told me that my original ORD-MCI segment would simply disappear. I was 1K at the time, which probably helped. Plus CDG-ORD itself is enough of a competitive market that no one would see this as trying to dodge a tariff. But clearly UA didn't care about me walking away from the last segment of this trip.

OskiBear

Not yet!

BTW - I think there was a subsequent post about WN flights. I seem to recall that WN has (or had) a stated policy of allowing hidden city/throw-away ticketing? Since they generally priced on segments, it probably wasn't terrible often that it was advantageous?