From their perspective the only way to change the flight is through their documented procedures which requires repricing fares and calculating change fees, even though you are just dropping the return leg. Often roundtrips are less than half the cost of one ways, sometimes even for domestic routes. That being said, I and probably many people on this forum know people who have not flown return segments, or skipped segments to get a lower fare (i.e. EWR > SFO is expensive but EWR > SFO > SMF is cheap so you book the latter and only take the EWR > SFO). While I don't promote such behaviour, there are awkward times where it is really the only option. So long as you only do it once or twice with a given airline they shouldn't bat an eye from what I've heard from others.

Also the airlines have already factored into their intricate models the fact that you won't show up for the flight. They've got decades of historical travel data for them to estimate the proportion of no shows. Hence the reason why airlines rarely oversell their flights.

Safe Travels,

James

Not sure how long UA typically waits for a no show, but if enough people with international connection on the flight are at stake, I doubt it will wait long. I think if anyone were to miss a connection due to this, it's because of UA's "stupidity" and not OP's action. UA already has the money in its pocket, why ask for more for the privilege of getting the seat to sell a second time? It makes no sense and I personally won't have a problem checking-in for a flight I don't intend to take if it were me.

LAX

Agree that it's silly to pay UA for such a privilege. It's also silly to check in for a flight you don't intend on taking. UA's OPS struggle enough as it is, the last they need is another wrinkle which further down the road may inconvenience fellow travellers. Whether OP checks in or not, UA is still getting money to sell the seat a second time, the only thing the check in does is delay selling the seat again to the gate. At some point (unsure when) UA will conclude that while OP did check in, they're a no-show and will clear their waitlist, thereby selling the seat yet again.

-James

OP: I understand it is surely frustrating to have to pay basically more than twice the original fare after making a last minute change. However, making a change is often still cheaper than buying a fully refundable / flexible ticket. Most of us on FT have figured out that for any regular flyer, even if you have to bite the bullet once in a while and pay the change fee and the new (higher) rate, buying non-refundable tickets is still way cheaper than buying flexible / refundable tickets.

No, for about six different reasons, including the fact that UA would then require the walk-up fare for IAD-SFO. It's against UA policy for them to drop segments in that manner unless there are IRROPS, to protect against hidden-city ticketing (as you later suggest).

It is rarely a good idea to escalate to a UA supervisor unless there is a technical issue that the front-line support agent can't resolve. I know it's painful advice after a 30-minute hold, but hanging up and calling again is almost always better than escalating for anything that involves policy, as the supervisor will support the agent 99.9% of the time.

In this case, it's not entirely clear that the agent is wrong. I mean, I think the agent is wrong, and WineCountryUA and Kacee both indicated that you can do this, and I'm 100% certain you can do it after you've taken the outbound. But I'm not sure that the agent isn't technically correct when you're trying to make this particular type of change prior to departure, especially if your ticket was fared as a round-trip. You may have gotten a different answer if you had said "I know I'm going to have to stay later than the rest of the party, but I'm not sure exactly how long; can you cancel my return now, to free up the seat, and then I'll call back when I have my travel plans finalized?" Just a thought for next time.

This will accomplish nothing. When you don't show up for the flight, you'll be offloaded and they'll put somebody else into your seat. The only people you'll affect will be gate agents who had nothing to do (personally, anyway :) with your issue. What I would do, however, now that you're booked onto Alaska, is to have your husband let you know if there's a flight delay on EWR-SFO. If there is, and it's substantial enough, call UA and ask them to refund your PNR.

There will be no impact on anyone else. UA plans for a certain number of no-shows. They're not going to hold a flight waiting for someone who checked in online but never showed up at the airport.

At T-15.

Precisely.

OP: As crazy as this sounds, UA (and most airlines) actually forbids buying a ticket and then not using it. I mean, they won't drag you onto the plane :), but it's contrary to their contract of carriage (it's called throwaway ticketing). When you bought the ticket, they gave you a discount in exchange for some conditions; one of the conditions was that you would fly the itinerary as purchased or pay the necessary change fees to change it to something else. Now, they're known to be reasonable, and they understand that when the remaining credit is less than the change fee, few people are going to pay that fee, which is why I'm surprised that you ran into an agent who was being a stickler about it. But they're not wrong, per se -- they're just being pigheaded.

There's a missing link in the above. You definitely can cancel the return (or any remaining legs) for that matter on a ticket, have the residual value left remaining on the PNR for future (potential) rebooking, and not have to pay a change fee until (and unless) you rebook. The missing link is that you're apparently trying to do this BEFORE flying the outbound leg. In that case, the agent and supervisor are right: you booked a RT flight. You can't just turn it into a one-way without reticketing/repricing and paying the applicable fee. The thing to do is to wait until after the SFO-EWR segment is flown, and then call to cancel the return leg. At that point, you can do so for free, and only pay the change fee if you choose to use the residual value at some point in the future.

And I just realized the complication in the OP's situation - they needed to book an alternate flight back home on the same day from a different airport, and likely would run into problems with conflicting reservations. And, had they waited until flying the outbound flight before canceling the return, then the fare for the alternate return flight might have gone up.

In that particular set of circumstances, booking the return on an alternate airline might very well have been the best thing to do. But, I would drop the notion of how "you're really sticking it to them" by using another carrier. UA loses out under this particular set of circumstances, but I'm quite confident that overall, they are ahead by requiring a refare for changes before the initial leg is flown, and by preventing overlapping bookings.

My skepticism here stems mostly from the fact that this all breaks down if the trip was constructed with round-trip fare components, like a hypothetical SFO-LHR. Should you be able to drop the return with no change fee then? After flying the outbound? In many cases re-faring will require an add/collect because of the difference in fare, and I doubt UA wants to empower front-line agents to make this distinction. No-showing the return will get you out of the bind, but...

This, of course. If you make a habit of saving money by cutting these corners, UA absolutely will send you a debit memo and take your account to collections if you don't pay up (cheaper and easier for them than suing).

You could have done it online for no charge after you flew the outbound.

OP this is actually really important advice that I hope you don't miss. You are pretty much in the best situation now. On the day of travel, watch for any sort of delay to the EWR-SFO flight. If it posts, call in and state that you needed to get back earlier and so have made other arrangements. You will then get a full refund in that case with no change fee at all. If it leaves on time, oh well you already have other arrangements and were planning to miss the flight anyway and eat the cost.

Also I have no problem with you checking in for the flight and no showing.

I didn't want to make a new thread on this.

I have a somewhat convoluted itinerary. Here's my situation:

-Flew first flights DTW-IAH-NRT-BKK, all good
-Return is BKK-NRT(ANA)-EWR(Upgraded in PZ, booked in premium plus)-DTW

Online, the change function always crashes. I usually just get "error, please call web services". Web services told me that since the first leg is on ANA, and also since I've already flown the first part of my flights, I have to call to change the return flights. Is that true? And how in the heck can I price out what a different routing would cost? I obviously can't search one way fares, and don't have the routing rules from when I booked.

My other problem is I don't know what I want to change it to yet. And I feel like finding an alternative would be a complete shot in the dark, require a long hold with the rate desk, etc. It's a big mess right now, and ideally for me I could just change it online and see what the new fees and fare difference would cost. Any suggestions? If I don't pick a flight with Premium plus on it (which is what, NRT-SFO and NRT-LAX), I also fear that is further going to complicate things. I was hoping to get an ANA route across the pacific as they fly earlier from NRT.

The change flights tool has never worked very well, so hardly surprising that it can't handle this kind of complexity.

What change are you hoping to accomplish? Generally speaking, anything that "looks the same" as your original return (BKK-DTW in PE via a reasonable routing on *A) is probably going to be an even exchange if it has your original booking class available. You said yourself that you don't know what you want to change to, so it's a little bit tricky to comment.

I pulled a random DTW-BKK R fare from a month ago and this is probably what the tags are for your fare too:

And these are routing rules for a DTW-BKK R fare:

Always makes me wonder things like how long has BUF been in that routing template and when if ever did CO offer service from BUF onward to a spoke? Believe today you can't manage BUF-LAS/HOU/DEN online :(

Upgraded segement and the online change tool ---> near certainty of failure

Gotta call on this one.