Let's say you're trying to get to a city with a big but relatively "expensive" airport. You usually save money by going to a smaller city a couple of hours away and having to get a ride to where you're going. Well, let's say there are some affordable flights on the Internet to the smaller city... that just happen to change planes at the big city. (Flying directly to the big city and that's it... is much more expensive.) Can you "fly to the smaller city" and just use the flight segments you need? (In other words, don't check any bags. Get out at the big city to change planes but don't come back. For your return flight, just show up at the airport in the bigger city and show your boarding pass to security for the second segment, just as if you'd stepped out to get something to eat in the main terminal.) It seems like they couldn't really catch you... but could you get in any trouble?
you have to complete both legs of the original flight before you can return, if I am reading you correctly...
Going would be no problem. There could be a problem returning. When you don't show up for your 1st segment of your return flight, they will assume you are not making the trip and they will release your seat on all remaining return segments. This means if the demand is there, someone else will have your seat and the plane will be full.
Right, so they check to see if you were on the original flight (really got on the plane, not just "checked in online") for both segments? I figured they would do something... [bitter rant: our environment is full of burning fossil fuels and they would rather have you fly past where you're going, then take a car back... or at least the price structure is such that people will do that]
Good point. I guess you could always drive to the other city for the return trip but at least you wouldn't have to do it on the way there... sigh, I'll probably just get to the smaller city by a more direct flight that doesn't get so maddeningly close to where I wanted to be in the first place... the prices are similar, though.
if you dont get a suitable answer on here. i would call and ask a travel agent. they usually will tell you what you can and cant do.
I kind of understand what you are saying, but not totally sure. I had a similar situation I think. I had a round trip flight from El Paso to Lubbock once. The flight from El Paso was delayed over night, so I decided to just drive to Lubbock with a rental car, and then take the flight back from Lubbock to El Paso when my return date came. I didn't bother to call the airline, since I thought it would be no problem. But when I got to the Lubbock airport they said my reservation had gone invalid, and I was out of a ticket. They explained I had to complete each leg of the flight route in order for the ticket to be valid. I had to shell out another 100 bucks to fly one way back to El Paso.
Wow. Thanks for the story. (that must have sucked) Crazy how you can buy something and it's still not yours, but I digress... I've also been known to use rental cars when I was this close to where I was going and my flight got delayed, but only on the very last leg of it, so that wasn't an issue. Looks like I'll be taking Southwest, like a good girl, and using all my flight segments to get two hours away from where I'm really going. The usual. I've gotten cheap deals flying through the other place - even gotten my mom to come bring me dinner in the airport during the layover - but not TO it. Thanks yet again to clutchfans for being there for a girl at 2 in the morning. This bbs is great.
On a similar note, I did the same thing on a flight from Pittsburgh to Akron (missed a connecting flight), but I told the airline. I had no problem, and they even gave me one of those "anywhere you want to fly" vouchers that have so many restrictions that I couldn't use it.
Question: Why don't you just get off in the big airport where you really want to go, and then when you need to leave, drive (or take a train or whatever) to the secondary airport that you bought your ticket from? Call the airline. If you can get anyone competent at all, they'll be able to tell you what you can do.
This is possible, all you have to do is alert the airline. Just get off at the Big City, don't board the flight, say you had a family emergency and missed the flight but went ahead and drove to the small city. Say, you still intend to use the return. They will understand..... DD
On a side note, farecompare.com is the best website I seen so far for good ticket prices. They even show which days to travel on to get better rates.
While this is a possibility, it is no sure thing. They may still want you to pay the difference of the routing, maybe only waiving the change fee. The airlines have an automated system that will check reservations for no-shows. Once it finds that segment, all downline space is canceled. Not only do you lose your seat but, on most domestic carriers, you will lose the remaining value of your ticket. It does seem that airline pricing is whacky, but the majority of it is in place to distribute traffic/passengers as evenly as is possible among their various flights and routings. You take a risk of paying more in the end if you try it.
What airline is it? If it's SWA, how would they even know if you got off the plane in the first place?
I would agree and especially wouldn't try this during the summer. Airlines are trying to cram more people onto less flights and two out of the last three times I flew I was on overbooked flights. I doubt they will show much sympathy for someone who doesn't compete all legs of the flight as they are looking to get more people onto the plane.
A long time ago, people used to do that trick to get to their destination cheaper. Airlines found out about it and implemented procedures to deter you from trying it.
Southwest keeps a count of all passengers on the flight. If you get off, they give you a temporary boarding pass to get back on the flight. I've done it before. But actually, I haven't done it since they switched to the A/B/C system, so I don't know if they let you do it anymore. But they would definitely notice immediately if there weren't enough passengers on the flight.
Southwest doesn't have this issue so much. It's mainly the hub and spoke carriers that connect your thru ORD, DFW, IAH, ATL, EWR, DTW, MSP, etc where you switch planes at the connect city.
Exactly. If it were Southwest, it would let me go where I needed to and not rip me off about it. (well, it uses Dallas as a connect city, but at least that's partway to where I need to be going) So... I'm going on Southwest instead of a hub carrier that has the nerve to make me switch planes at the place where I would have liked to simply stopped. security reasons... not like they don't check everybody on the way in. I believe it's for revenue reasons.
