And just for potential clarity (and since the op is a UA newbie), you don't want to throw away any but the very last segment on an itin; otherwise the rest of your flights are cancelled.

Windflyer, can you do stopovers at other hubs for a reasonable charge or is Denver unique?

It's just DEN.

Why would any airline penalize a pax for "throwing away" a bought ticket? I don't understand....

Do a search for "hidden city", thats one explanation

Jeff

Because it often costs more to fly a very short distance than it does to fly a long distance. For example, San Francisco to Denver might cost $300 whereas SF to New York, with a connection in Denver, only costs $150. Buying SFO-DEN-EWR and throwing away the DEN-EWR segment reduces SFO-DEN by $150.

This may be an explanation but it still sounds crazy.

Welcome to the wonderful, wacky world of airfare pricing. :)

Be Aware Of Propeganda & Unenforceable Rules
 

mitcb01,

If you throw away the last segment of a ticket on any airline, I don't see practically how they would charge you full fare...even NW?

What probably is going on is they tell you they might do this. E.g. somewhere in the fine print, it probably says that they can charge you full fare if you do something wrong. But if you throw away the last flight coupon, think about it, practically how could they put an extra charge o9n your credit card? You could dispute it as an unauthorized charge.

You have to keep in mind that a lot of institutions and individuals will "threaten" to do something, even when they fully know they practically speaking really can't do it except maybe in 1% of cases.

An exagerated analogy might be if I told you if you don't order a Sam Adams on your next flight, I will charge you a $1,000 fine. Just because I tlel you this, it doesn't mean I have any way of collecting the fine or enforcing what I want to do. But often people just believe what they are told especially if the entity telling them the something is somehow perceived as an authority figure.

Has anyone heard of a case on any big six airline in the past 5 years where a pax was actually charged for throwing away the last coupon on a ticket? Come on, any big six airline, anytime in the last five years? Or 8 years?

That being said if you made a habbit of throwing way the last coupon say evry week, perhaps under the right circumstances they might penalize your mileage account. There is very little regulation of mileage accounts, so if a big six airline took say 50,000 miles from you as a penalty, short of funding a lawsuit against the airline there might be very little you could do. But if they take $10,000 out of your credit card as a "penalty" you could dispute it with your bank, and poof, it would be off your statement, and they airline would have to get a judgement in court and then chase you to collect the judgement which is extremely unlikely unless we are talking say $50,000 or more and you have liquid assetts to pay that.

Have people had any problems, flying UA purely domestically, with this practice (that is, asking the agent to check your baggage to an intermediate stop)?

A better example of this is an itin such as - PHL-XXX-PHL-SCE (which I actually looked into many years ago) which may be cheaper than just the PHL-XXX-PHL fare. In this case you could simply deplane in PHL and not use the last leg. This is a true "hidden city" itinerary.

SFO-DEN-EWR would not work if you get off in DEN unless you are doing a 1 way as your return EWR-DEN-SFO will likely be cancelled.

Not completing last leg of flight
 

I am trying to price a ticket from denver/vegas/denver

the cost of the ticket is lower if you fly denver/vegas/denver with a plane change to colorado springs in denver

What happens if you get off in denver on the return and don't board the leg to colorado springs?

Dash

If you only skip the final leg of the return portion of your itinerary, there shouldn't be any problem. This won't work if you have checked luggage though.

Just don't make a habit of it or you could get in trouble.

Even with checked luggage I've had no problem doing this.

I flew MEL-SYD-SFO-SEA-SFO-SYD-MEL, but I skipped the last SYD-MEL sector.

When I checked in @ SEA I made sure my bags were tagged to SYD. I was given the boarding pass for SYD-MEL. When I got to SYD I told the ground handling agent I was getting off the plane now and not going to Melbourne, gave them my boarding pass and they said fine. Their only concern was where my bags were. They even thanked me for letting them know, so they wouldn't be wasting time trying to find me in the terminal.