Whoa!!! Not so fast. The OP hasn't forgotten his manners Just wanted to wait 48 hours to see if there was any backlash from the airline. So, here we go...

The short story -- My wife got off the plane as we had planned and skipped the connection. We had the bag picked up in Atlanta by a luggage delivery service and it is on it's way to us. So far, no problem from the airline (Delta). Happy ending!

Additional info for the curious -- Turns out the carry-on bag wasn't too heavy or too big. By the time my wife's zone was called for loading, the flight attendant/gate agent insisted that the overheads were all full and the last 10 people on the plane had to check their bags. Delta put the bags in the cargo hold and checked them through to the passenger's final destination instead of the usual gate check "pink tag" area that returns your bags at the gangway upon arrival. My wife even stated that she wasn't going through to ATL (I know, RED FLAG!), but the gate agent said she didn't have time to do a short ship. My wife tried to plead her case again upon arrival. The gate agent sent her to baggage claim to see if they could pull the bag, but they said it was too late.

We are using BaggageQuest.com to retrieve and ship the bag from ATL. "Matt" was our customer rep and was VERY helpful, making several calls to work things out. The $175 cost was significantly less than 1/2 of what it would have cost to purchase a ticket (not to mention hotel) to get my wife back home from ATL if she had stayed with her luggage. I had to call a couple of different services before I found one willing/able to go to the airport to retrieve the bag. We simply had to email them all of the pertinent passenger info, including claim number, and they picked the bag up the next day from the unclaimed bag window. For reference, we also considered asking a friend in ATL to pick up and ship the bag for us, but decided it was too big a hassle to ask since they aren't close to the airport.

Happy to answer any questions!

Oops! Hit "submit" too quickly. A big "thanks" to everyone for posting your advice and input. We only had a couple of hours to decide what to do, and your quick responses were very helpful.

Thanks for reporting back, lenuit, and the happy outcome.

I'm new here and not sure where to post and hope this isn't a "stupid" question. I found this thread while searching for connecting flight issues and it seems somewhat related.

I am trying to get from Green Bay to Detroit. It is MUCH cheaper to go GRB to Lansing, which is about 60 miles from where I want to be. However, this flight has a layover in Detroit. (go figure!) Is it possible to just leave in Detroit and not continue to Lansing? How will this work on my return flight? Can I skip the Lansing to Detroit portion and just get on my connecting flight in Detroit? I will not be checking any luggage.

From your responses to the OP- I'm guessing this would not be a good idea. I am paying $192 for GRB-LAN and do not want to be charged the $532 for the GRB-DTW flight if I attempt this.

I appreciate any advice from the experts!

You'll end up paying a lot more. Skipping the DTW-LAN on the outbound will cancel all of the rest of the ticket (not only DTW-LAn but DTW-LAN-DTW-GRB). If you want to do this, buy OW tickets.

You can only skip the last leg of your return flight, if you skip any earlier ones, your reservations for the remaining flights will be cancelled. And as this thread shows, even cancelling the last segment can cause problems!