<p>Yes, JYM, here’s another thread that pops up now and then! Help with travel plans. :)</p>
<p>My S needs to fly to Cincinnati next month. The cheapest roundtrip flight is about $400. But he can fly to Dayton, about an hour away, for $200 less. The kicker is that the Dayton flight has a connection in Cincinnati.</p>
<p>Can he take that flight, and just skip the second leg on the way there, and stay in Cinci? Will they cancel his return flight if he doesn’t complete the entire first flight? If he talks to them at the airport and says he is going to “miss” the second leg, will that prevent them from cancelling the return?</p>
<p>For the return flight, I realize he will probably have to fly out of Dayton. If he misses the first leg of that portion, I’d expect them to cancel the whole thing. (Anybody know any different?) That shouldn’t be a problem. There is a $14 Greyhound bus between the two cities, and we have relatives in Dayton he can stay with. It just doesn’t make sense to fly AWAY from Cinci on the way there, then turn around and immediately catch a bus BACK to Cinci.</p>
<p>See if there happens to be ground transpo (cheap) from the Dayton AIRPORT into the city of CInci (or airport-to-airport) and have your relatives pick him up in Cinci. Or if they are GREAT relatives, ask if they would drive all the way to the Dayton airport to pick him up there.</p>
<p>Recently, I had to fly my D from Buffalo back to Providence. I discovered the piece making the trip costly was the final leg, Boston-Providence. So I googled up the BOSTON AIRPORT and clicked on “ground transportation.” To my surprise and delight, there was a bus from that airport right into downtown Providence OR the Providence airport. So all we did was buy the Buffalo-Boston flight, which was reasonable, and she did the rest by bus.</p>
<p>You’ll find the most info out by dialing up the airport on google, and clicking on their ground transpo info. The airlines didn’t know much about any of this (well, duh). </p>
<p>It works because Providence is something of a far-flung satellite city of Boston (an hour away). So if Dayton relates that way to Cinci, maybe it’ll be there for you, too.</p>
<p>True ^
They will cancel the rest of the flights. The only time you can safely do this is on your return flight, when you just do Part 1 and not Part 2.</p>
<p>P3T - No, the relatives live in Dayton. I am sure they would be happy to pick him up at the Dayton airport. It is getting him to Cinci that is the problem. He can fly to and from Dayton, and take the $14 greyhound bus to Cincinnati.</p>
<p>But the flight goes through Cincinnati. He leaves from NYC, flies to Cinci, and makes a connection for another flight to Dayton. Then, once in Dayton, he will have to catch a bus back to Cinci. It seems silly to not just stay in Cinci, but I don’t want them to cancel the rest of his trip!</p>
<p>I will keep playing around with the site. Maybe he can book two one-way flights rather than a round trip.</p>
<p>I know it’s frustrating. We’ve done a lot of air travel the past few months (as well as booking S’s flight to and from school), and the vagaries boggle the mind. Good luck!</p>
<p>Kayak is a good site for checking airfares, but if you want to fly Southwest, just use the airline website. We save hundreds of dollars by having our student fly to an airport in another city (2 hours away), rather than flying into our own city (15 min. drive to airport). It’s a nuisance, but it not only saves money, we can find occasional nonstop flights.</p>
<p>CALL THE AIRLINE. I would be very surprised if a live reservation person would charge more for a flight that has fewer legs. The internet search engines are great but sometimes can’t compute every combination. I have found the phone agents to be generally knowledgable and helpful in arranging the cheapest fare.</p>