Getting off flight early
 

I wanted to fly to Miami but the tix were $1100. I ended up getting tickets to Fort Lauderdale then I noticed that the flight has a stop in Miami.

Is it illegal (or against rules) to get off of the flight in Miami instead of the ticketed destination?

This is a round-trip flight. Will they not allow me to get on the return flight if I've skipped a leg on the arrival?

Thanks.

My understanding is: It's against the rules, but not illegal. However, they will definitely cancel your return flight if you've skipped a leg on the arrival.

If you get off in Miami
 

The airline WILL cancel the rest of your ticket. Whenever you skip a leg on the outbound, the return is cancelled.

Someone flies a segment from MIA to FLL??? That's less than 30 miles.

What airline is this?

This is called a hidden city flight and it is against the airlines rules. This will not work with a round trip flight (as others have stated).

However, if you are going one-way and not checking any baggage...

Shoot, if the price difference is huge, just hop on a bus or shuttle or something. It's only 30 miles away, right? Fly all the way to Miami and then just get on a bus back to FLL. You play within the rules and save your money. Cruise passengers take that trip all the time.

Similar (but hypothetical) scenario. What if you skip a segment on the return leg with no intention of continuing on? e.g.

Out: A -> B -> C
In: C -> B -> A

but you skip the B->A segment entirely. Will that have any repercussion on the ticket such as fee penalty, the airline take away all the miles for the trip, etc? Just curious

The general wisdom is that if you do this "once in awhile" the airline won't ever say anything - in fact, I once had a CS agent tell me to do it. When I asked "what about the last segment since I'd already be checked in for the flight", the response was "just get off the plane at airport B and keep walking."

In the olden days, my travel agent used to actually get cheaper fares by booking A-B-C-B-A and then cancelling the B-C-B portion of the ticket, this kept the original fare. But, I think the airlines have long since caught onto this little trick. I know she was always a bit worried that the "overnight audit" would catch it, but I never had a refare happen.

But, back to A-B-C-B-A. In theory, walking away from the last segment (B-A) is against the terms of the ticket and they can come back to get you, but the odds of this happening seem low. As others have said, skipping B-C will almost certainly cause the cancellation of the rest of the ticket.

Thanks. I asked because I was seriously considering this. Being actually in SFO, it would be great if I can skip the last SFO->YVR segment :D

I've walked away from the B-A segment in the A-B-C-B-A scenario above. It has always been due to a change in my plans after I bought the ticket and ended up costing me money (buying a new B-A ticket to get home later). I think most of the tariff violation rules are written with an eye on people looking to circumvent high fares.

In my case, my common "B-A" is ORD-MCI. We have family/friends in Chicago, so in the past if I've had a business trip route through there on a Friday, I'll hop off for the weekend. Usually I end up with a MDW-MCI one-way home on Sunday or whatever. It's never been an issue...

The other one I would have done is DEN-MCI, but United actually has a nice (but not well-known) feature that most fares allow a DEN stopover for a flat $50 fee (or at least they did as of 2007). I've taken advantage of that one in the past. Sadly, the same does not seem to apply to their other hubs.

If one isn't checking in any bags, how would the airline know you've disembarked prematurely?

That's my question. Obviously a change of plane requirement means they would know you didn't board the new aircraft with your boarding pass. If it's the same continuing aircraft and you're not required to deplane at intermediary stops, how would they know whether or not you did? The crew doesn't exactly check the manifest name by name to make sure they're aboard.

Of course you'd still have to go to the originating city for the return flights.

I'm sure this varies in other countries, but my understanding is that in the US the airlines cannot legally "come back to get you." That is, they can ask you to pay some fare difference, but they have no legal means to enforce this (and if they tried to sue you, would lose). I vaguely remember the airlines attempting to lobby congress for laws allowing them to collect fare differences in these situations, and being shot down. I could be wrong though, would appreciate if anyone knows the law on this for sure. And of course this doesn't prevent an airline from coming after a travel agent by threatening to no longer sell tickets to that person if they don't pay up.

I think it comes down to the burden on the airline to prove that you didn't fly the last leg, which is very difficult to do.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8703e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/104)

I'm still trying to figure out who flies MIA-FLL these days. :D

This isn't really what I meant. What I meant is that even if you were to admit not flying the last leg, they couldn't charge you more for it after the fact (i.e. they are not legally allowed to charge you extra for not consuming a service you have already paid for).

Ah, I see. I am duly corrected. :)

As with another questioner, which airline flies an MIA/FLL continuation aboard the same a/c? The concept is a bit strange when it comes to corporate number crunching, unless it's some sort of repositioning to increase seats for FLL departures (above ARR levels), which doesn't make much sense either.

If it is a small plane and they are calculating weight distribution, etc., they might catch you as they try to reconcile the number expected on the plane with the number actually on it.

Or if they're oversold they're going to see an empty seat when they thought they were all full.

Just book "one way" instead of "round trip", and they are not likley to cancel the homebound, as it is not on your itinerary or on your ticket.

If you get off the plane at the stop over with other pax, who is really going to notice? Just make sure you don't check luggage or they will think you brought on a bomb or something and deplaned before it was set to go off. This will seriously screw things up and can get you in trouble. I would also suggest you trade seats with someone (equal to equal if possible:D) so your seat is not empty when you leave.



You could also claim that upon arriviing at MIA and taking out your phone to catch up on messages, you were advised of a personal tragedy and have to get off unexpectedly.

I've done BOS-EWR-LAX-EWR-BOS. I live near EWR.
On the outbound, I took a $15 bus to Boston, then got on the flight to EWR, then to LAX. On the way back, I flew LAX-EWR and skipped EWR-BOS.

MIA and FLL are close enough that you can rent a car in FLL and drive to MIA in less than an hour.

I have not been to Florida, but based on my experience on a different flight, the way the airline stops you from disembarking prematurely is by asking to see your boarding pass as you exit. So if your flight goes A>B>C, and you are ticketed for A>B as shown on your boarding pass, you can get off at B. If you are ticketed for A>C, then you have to stay on.

Me too, DL did years ago. But now?:confused:

Any penalty for not boarding a second flight?
 

Hello. First timer here.

I live in the hub city of a major carrier. I was recently checking fares for flights through my city (for relatives passing through) and noticed that in a large number of instances it is cheaper (in some cases drastically)to book a flight through my airport to another city than actually to my city. In other words, the airline is basically paying you to connect to anotehr flight and fly somewhere else rather than just getting off in the hub airport.

HEre is my question.

What are the repercussions of buying a one-way ticket from someplace that connects through my city and simply do not change planes and board the second flight? I recognize on a roundtrip ticket they could cancel my return but that is not in play here.

the reason why I ask is because I just saw a one-way fare from one coast to the other that requires a change of planes in my airport. That 3000 mile flight was $100 cheaper than just flying to my airport (same plane!). If I don't check bags, I'd like to book that flight and when the first flight lands at my home airport, just go home and not board the second plane.

The only thing about this is don't do it often on that particular airline you are going to fly, or they are going to catch up with you, knowing you often cancel/no show for the second half of the ticket.

eschule, welcome to FlyerTalk!

This subject comes up from time-to-time on the TravelBuzz forum and [as forum co-moderator], I merged your thread with a similar one so you'll see the discussion of "hidden city" ticketing. Deliberately booking a through connection with the intent to deplane at the intermediate stop to avoid the higher fare does raise tariff issues. As the last post shows, though, rare instances of such deplaning may skate by..... YMMV.

One additional consideration. The airline's responsibility in your example of routing A-B-C is to get you from A to C. If there are irrops or something else goes wrong, city B could be skipped entirely. That would be the passenger's problem, not the airlines.

Thanks for the assistance and the merger with the prior post. I did a search but couldn't find it first.

Since asking I have literally checked 15 different routes through my city and ALL were cheaper.

I love the title of this thread because of the image it conjures up. :D I find myself wondering if parachutes are involved.

I think you're right. Airlines can unilaterally take the added funds from a travel agent since they have a contract with the agent, and they've done that in cases where there was a pattern of the agent using that trick. I don't know whether they can/would treat a giant agent like expedia this way. If you book yourself, their only recourse is to drop you from their frequent flier plan, so if you're worried, don't give your FF number if you plan to skip a segment. But I doubt they'd actually chase after every customer who appeared to have skipped a segment, because most of the time they'd find that their computer system was at fault.

Checking today on flight tracker I see American Eagle operated flights 9849 and 9849 between FLL and MIA and MIA to FLL. Must be something for aircraft positioning for operations or maintenance. Also see a Gulfstream Internation flight.
Many years ago many airlines especially Eastern and Delta operated FLL to MIA and reverse segments, usually for market consolidation or aircraft positioning. The passengers on board either were through passengers or someone taking advantage of the service to make a connection. In the early 1980's I was living in FLL and took an Eastern early morning FLL-MIA flight that was going somewhere after MIA north to change planes in MIA to take a MIA-NAS flight. The ticket was FLL-NAS connecting in MIA. I would not think anyone would actually buy a FLL-MIA ticket as it's only 30 miles away.