I'm looking at a ticket to in international destination, the airline flys direct from my home airport. If I book the ticket flying from another airport connecting through my airport the fare is 100$ less than if I fly direct from my home airport. Can I book the connection and not use that portion of the ticket? TIA

While there may be some differences based on the specific airline you are flying, normally you can ONLY throw-away the final leg. If you do not take all the legs, the airlines will normally cancel the remainder of your trip.

It's called "hidden city ticketing", and no, in general it's not allowed.

The ticket prices are not set based on how much the flights cost to operate; they're based on how much they can charge between particular city pairs.

Its pretty common in Michigan to have a cheaper ticket on a connection from LAN, FNT, etc. through DTW than it is to buy a non-stop ticket from DTW to many destinations. As wharvey pointed out, you can only throw away the last leg and drive home if you choose.

Just to be absolutely clear, if you aren't there for the first leg of your trip, the rest is automatically cancelled.

Thanks for all the replies. This is a real nice, informative community on this board. It kinda sucks airlines can pull this stuff, but then when we want to they say no fair (or no fare).

It may seem unfair, but that's because pricing is based upon demand rather than costs, a perfectly legitimate way to determine prices. If demand from Lansing to NYC is low, and from Detroit to NYC is high, the Lansing-NYC ticket will probably cost less, even though it stops in Detroit on the way. Nothing unfair here.

Don't be silly! Don't you comprehend that for almost every commodity, product and service in the world, the local price may be heavily affected by the level of local demand (and the supply available to address that demand)?

Look at the "sticker" on a new car at a dealer's next time you shop. The posted "Delivery Charge" is the same across the Continental US, no matter how far from the assembly plant the dealer is located. Are Ford, GM, Toyota, Nissan, Chrysler "playing fair".

I know of two truck dealerships barely 100 miles apart. At one, a small country town where a low volume dealer is located, rarely with more than a couple of pickups on the lot, the price of a new truck will be many hundreds, often thousands more than at a well known regional outlet where there may be over 100 of the same model, similarly equipped, in stock (as well as several hundred similar trucks from other manufacturers. While "relative" demand my be about equal, supply and availability combine to reduce prices (with sales volume vastly increasing manufacturer incentives - read "kickbacks" - to a dealer).

In your case, the airline has routinely empty seats between the small market and the hub, low demand and high supply. The tickets are discounted in an attempt to improve overall revenues. The other side of the coin....the cost of driving to/from, plus airport parking in the small market would likely far outweigh the $100 savings in your case.

No matter how inept are the visible results, airline bean counters can count, although beyond the total of fingers and toes available in the "counting room", the results become predictably on the red side of the ledger.

Yes, but you can go to that dealer and pay less for that truck and then drive it home, they don't cancel your sale or take the truck back. You can go to any dealer and negotiate the best price and buy the car.
In the Lansing-NYC example, with a flight stopping in Detroit and the Detroit to NYC flight costing more, why not allow the person to by the Lansing-nyc ticket and just fly from Detriot and chuck the unused portion. This is a rhetorical question. They made up the fares, I paid for my ticket but then they don't like that ulitized the better fare so they cancel it.

Hi,

The difference is that you are entering into a contract with the airline to fly from A to B. Due to their hub and spoke system, you happen to fly through C. If there is any unexpected weather, or any other change, they may actually fly you through D.

The fact that you want to fly from C requires you to have a contract with the airline indicating that fact.

To take the truck analogy, you want to buy a truck from a dealer in town A, and sign a contract to that effect. You can't expect to walk into the dealership in town C and pick up a truck based on your contract with the dealer in town A.

Cheers,

GenevaFlyer

Direct (non-stop) flights are faster and generally more convenient. Airlines bank on this convenience. (More convenient = more expensive)

If the airline allowed Detroit pax the option to buy LAN-DTW-JFK and just fly DTW-JFK, then who would buy just the DTW-JFK fare? The airlines would lose (even more) money and the Lansing pax would be unable to fly - all the seats would be sold, even though empty.