<p>My S is flying to see his girlfriend in a couple of weeks and booked a flight to her city. Now he finds out that he has to travel to another city to do some training so instead of flying home he has to fly to another city. He looked into booking a one way flight and it had 2 layovers and put him into town 4 hours later and was $30 cheaper.</p>
<p>He wants to just keep his original flight and not make the return trip. His company will book the flight from the city he will be in to his destination and then home after training. He wants to know if there will be any problems not showing up for the return trip home on his original flight.</p>
<p>No, he won’t have any problem. He could just cancel the return home leg online after he has taken the first leg. The only time he would have a problem is if he didn’t take the first leg, airline would normally cancel his return home trip, but this is not the case for your son.</p>
<p>I know he’s flying Continental. He’s going to call them on Monday but I said I would ask. I think the best thing will be to cancel the return flight if he can.</p>
<p>If he calls and cancels the RT part of the flight, they may want him to pay a different one-way fare. It might be best not to say anything, just not take the flight home. Things might have changed about this kind of thing…maybe there is some general language on the airline website which might clarify the issue.</p>
<p>United and Continental have just merged their computer systems this weekend and there have been some glitches. I might wait a few days to make a call as I understand they have been busy. That said, I wouldn’t do anything until after the first leg of his trip.</p>
<p>yes, wait until the first leg is complete, then call & say he needs to stay in town unexpectedly. Alternatively, have his corporate travel agent look at his current reservation and see if they can amend it and pay for the changes.</p>
I just checked on a particular United nonstop flight between the two coasts and the r/t fare ware around $500 but the one way fare there on the exact same flight was over $800! The legacy airlines like United, American, and the like are still into maximum price gouging as much as they can and they do this for one-way trips because they figure if you’re doing a one-way trip you have to really go right then and have no other options. He can double check the flight he’s on - just go to the airline’s website and price it both ways.</p>
<p>He’s likely better off just letting them know afterwards that he didn’t use the return leg and would likely be ahead even if there’s no credit for it.</p>
<p>People miss legs of flights all the time for a variety of reasons.</p>
<p>I often book two-way tickets for one leg for the reason above. Although I just had to do a double hop - and it was far cheaper to book three one-way flights. The biggest problem is that all the travel sites - don’t work with all the airlines … and sometimes the travel sites have flights the airlines themselves don’t have on their own websites. It’s a mess.</p>
<p>That’s what I would do. Don’t give the airline a chance to mess up the rest of your schedule or charge you more.</p>
<p>Also, have him take carry-on luggage only. If he checks luggage his bags will be checked through to his final destination, and he might not be able to get access to them after the first leg.</p>
<p>The flights departing from the destination should be on different airlines, so the original airline doesn’t match the name/FF number on their records and invalidate the outbound.</p>