Airline Ticket Question

Parent Cafe
1

As we know, Holiday travel is expensive, and I’ve left it late … The following are international scenarios…

(A) Flying from A to B on a one-way, non-stop ticket is $950 x 4 people

(B) Flying from C to A to B one way is $500 (two different carriers) x 4 people

Is it possible to buy option (B) and pick up the flight at A and fly to B without using the C to A portion or would we be considered ‘no-shows’?

I hope this is not too confusing! Thanks

2

If you miss the 1st leg of the trip—C to A, you are a no-show and the ticket is cancelled.

3

@HImom Thanks! That’s too bad; it’s a significant difference in price to get to the same place from almost the same origin!

4

Well, you could get yourselves to C and then legitimately use the fare! The airlines know people try to do this—it’s called hidden cities fares. Some folks are able to just have hand carry items and then get off before the last stop on the one way fare to save a lot of money.

I’ve never done or tried to do this.

5

I agree with post 1. It might be helpful to know where you are going, because you can save money depending on which airport you fly in and out of. For instance, it’s almost the same price to go the Paris via LHR, with a stop over in LHR, as it is to just fly nonstop to Paris from the US. However, if you stop in LHR on the way back, it’s much more expensive. It’s because of the way they tax inbound LHR flights from Europe, or some such nonsense.

6

@Lindagaf - Yes! UK airports are so heavily taxed LHR to Shanghai (non-stop) v Riga to LHR to Shanghai (non-stop) same flight. Maddening.

7

It would have been ok to go C to B and then got off in B if the fare was lower.

8

There is a website (and an app) skiplagged dotcom that finds all of these situations where you can save money by getting off a flight during a stopover. Several caveats, biggest being you cannot check a suitcase.

Basically, you pay for convenience of a nonstop flight. Lower fares are for multi-stop trips. This creates all kinds of disparities which seem to make no sense. Here is one we just ran into:

We want to fly from Charlotte to Phoenix. Roundtrip non-stop flight from Charlotte is $572. But, if we go to Greensboro (1 1/2 hour drive away) we can fly roundtrip from Greensboro to Phoenix with 1 stop in Charlotte… for $250! And when you get to Charlotte you switch to the exact same flight we wanted to take nonstop from CLT to Phoenix. So we were fully prepared to drive to Greensboro to take the cheaper flight but we were able to get the nonstop flight from CLT using airline miles.

9

If you are hoping to get off be aware the flight may end up somehow diverting so the middle city is skipped and everyone gets to final city without stop in mid city. If that puts a huge wrench in plans, plan accordingly. Also, it’s much harder and more expensive to switch flights over holidays.

10

You can use a technique called “skiplag”. You need to go from A to B, but instead, you search for flights from A to B to C. There’s even an website (skiplagged.com) and an app to help you with the search. Make sure you don’t check any bags, and just throw away the boarding pass from B to C after you landed in B. Airlines don’t like it and United actually sued a couple years ago but the lawsuit was dismissed by the court.

Also, don’t enter your frequent flyer account number. Otherwise, there’s a potential the airline may close your frequent flyer account.

11

Some airlines have a “no-show” penalty fee as well as simple cancellation. I just booked tickets for first of the year on my favorite foreign carrier. I just happened to notice that the cancellation fee for my ticket and fare class was $200.

12

@1NJParent Thanks for the tip; I’m going to try that. It’s maddening knowing that I am paying a premium to fly out of one airport, when I could sti on the same plane for almost half the price if I wanted to spend an extra day traveling!

13

It is called “hidden city airline ticketing”. If you web search that, you can find lots of stuff on it.

Things airlines do to discourage or prevent it:

  • If you miss any segment, the rest of the ticket is cancelled (including the return of a round trip if you do that on the outbound).
  • If you have checked baggage, you may not be able to retrieve them at the hidden city.
  • If your frequent flyer number is on the ticket, the airline may penalize your account.
  • In case of irregular operations (cancellation, diversion, or delay), the airline may rebook you to your ticketed final destination on a route that does not go through the hidden city. E.g. if you ticket A->B->C intending to get off at hidden city B, but the A->B segment is cancelled, the airline may only offer to rebook you to A->C (nonstop) or A->D->C (intermediate stop other than intended hidden city B).
14

What two cities are you traveling between? Perhaps folks will have suggestions with more specifics.

Where/how are you scouting for tickets? Are you using certain websites other than the airlines?