Deleting a segment from a multi city trip
 

Mods; please feel free to move this if there is a more appropriate thread.

I have a multi city trip next month HNL-ORD-DTW (6 days), DTW-ORD (2 days), ORD-HNL. There is a strong possibility I may need to drive my daughter's car from Detroit to Chicago. Will it be a problem if I notify UA that I will not be taking the DTW-ORD flight and have them drop that segment? Obviously, I don't want to lose my ORD-HNL return trip. What say you FT sages? Thank you.

Award or paid?

Paid

This is one of those areas where award tickets can be more flexible.

For paid tickets, this would be considered a change and be repriced. Could go up in price, could go down.

However, skipping the segment would be even worst as the last segment would be canceled.

Got it, thanks!

+1 on letting UA know that you will not be flying. The question is when to do so, since dropping the segment will most likely trigger a refare.

If you cancel before taking the first flights, you can confirm the refare by pricing out the new itinerary and note the difference.

I would normally recommend cancel the DTW flight after taking the first flights, that way the refare will only impact the last flight to HNL. However, depending on the timing and advance purchase fare rules, that might increase your fare compare to cancelling earlier.

Then again, it might not hurt to ask an agent whether you can just cancel the segment you are not planning to fly without refaring. Unlikely, but they have been more willing to do favors and waivers in my personal experience.

I think the first step is to price the change now so you know whether it causes the fare to increase, and if so, how much. If it's no increase or nominal, then just go ahead and do it. If it's really expensive, then consider the other options (ask for a waiver or wait until you've flown the outbound.

Note that the best way to get the new fare is to do a clean dummy booking on the website. Using the "change flights" function may not return the best fare.

Thanks all, that's all very helpful. [MENTION=659374]Kacee[/MENTION], excellent point re: the dummy booking to determine current pricing. I can't remember the last time the change function actually worked properly.

It's worked better lately, but it still doesn't always return the cheapest fare, and this is a multi-city itinerary, which increases the chance of an error.