“Hacker fare” is a term used by kayak to lure newbies who don’t know anything about flying and think it’s some great deal. They aren’t really “hacker” at all; they’re perfectly legit. You could have gotten the same thing at the airline website.
“Note that “hidden city” ticketing carries additional risks beyond the airline objecting, such as rerouting after flight cancellation (e.g. if you bought A->B->C intending really to go to B, but the airline reroutes you to another flight A->D->C, then you will not be able to get to B). In addition, you would not be able to check baggage unless B happens to be a customs checkpoint in an international flight, since it will be delivered at C.”
I would think it would be obvious that if one bought A-B-C intending to get off at B, that one couldn’t check baggage since it would be tagged to C. It hardly seems worth mentioning. (And yes, you’re right about the exception if A originated overseas and B is first point of US entry, but people who are flying those routes aren’t newbies.)
I’ve done that before. From AMS flight, I just walked off the plane w my rollaboard in DTW and ditched the last segment of my ticket.
Not having checked bags is liberating!
I did it multiple times from Brazil back to the US where the entry point was Chicago but my final destination (allegedly) Newark. This is common practice. A few years back, Sally305 (poster) had a son coming back from a semester abroad and wanted to do so in Chicago as she had family there who would pick him up. We advised her he could ditch the final leg and just walk out of the airport in Chicago; he did, no problem. This is just not a huge deal. The airlines are only going to get you if you are a regular commuter doing this regularly on the same set of flights every week or so.
@Sweetbeet
You should have checked your son in for the flight. Musicians commonly book a seat for high priced instruments. That would be a valid reason to use that ticket.
It didn’t matter, though. Once they do the counts and realize son isn’t there, a seat will be released for standby.
IOW it wouldn’t have mattered if you’d checked in son at the kiosk. Once he didn’t check in at the gate, his seat is lost.
'You should have checked your son in for the flight. Musicians commonly book a seat for high priced instruments. That would be a valid reason to use that ticket."
Many of the airlines enabling you to book a seat for a high priced instrument require it to be a window seat bulkhead. They have special procedures for this.
I am a huge fan of Southwest. They transported my son to and from college for 4 years. They let you cancel or change a flight up to one hour before and you only pay the difference of the cost of the new flight if you change it (or get a refund if it is cheaper.) and no bag fees! Totally awesome. He once got mono over a break and stayed home longer. There were other times when he changed plans too. So nice for the flexibility, and since you always buy the two legs of a round trip as independent fares, there is no fare trickery. Wish all airlines worked like this. Oh, and I don’t think they are on Kayak or Orbitz, so always check separately!
How about if we do this on the outbound flight? Will the return flight be impacted at all?
Yes, it will. Once you don’t show up for a segment, the remaining segments get cancelled.
So for example, you book A-B-C with return C-B-A.
You can skip your last segment B-A and nothing will happen; just walk away. But if you skip B-C or C-B, the remaining segments get cancelled.
Yes^^^^^ The return flight may be canceled. This is spelled out on the carriers I fly most frequently. Words to the effect that failure to appear for any leg will cause the cancellation of the rest of the ticket. Policies are probably available for most carriers on their websites. I’ve known travelers to whom this happened.
Clarifying above, @Pizzagirl and I are saying the same things. Don’t skip a leg in the middle of a ticket and expect to keep later portions. If return is on the outgoing ticket, you can’t skip a segment and expect to pick up later in the sequence.
What GMT is talking about is an international flight. Whenever you enter the US, even if you’re going on to another destination, you have to collect your checked bags (if you had checked bags), go through customs and re-check them to your final destination. So in her case, she had a ticket from AMS-DTW-whatever. She just walked out of the airport at DTW after going through customs. If she’d had checked bags, she would have had them with her.
Thanks! Yes, this is for international flight. Guess we won’t do that 
You can drop any last leg of any flight sequence - you just can’t do so with checked bags, as they will be checked through to the final destination.
The one exception is that if you are coming in from overseas - you can drop the last leg of your flight sequence WITH checked bags - because you have to re-collect your checked bags at your first point of entry anyway, even if you are just rechecking them to final destination. So instead of rechecking them for your final leg, you simply walk out of the airport with them.
“I did research this a bit and found some people who claimed that some airlines may “ding” you. for this practice if you make a habit of it – losing frequent flier miles for example. I don’t know how true that is, but this was the first time we’d ever done it so I wasn’t too concerned.”
When my son was traveling to colleges he made a last minute decision to visit one more school in the area of the country he was visiting and decided to forego his original return ticket. Booking a flight on a different airline to the last-minute school from his intended city of departure was far cheaper than incurring the change ticket fee for his original return.
He flew home using the first airline, however, after which he received an email “signed” by the president of the airline asking how he enjoyed his travel on the airline for the period in question, and expressing the airline’s corporate effort to provide quality service and features for all of its customers. The letter ended thanking him for choosing to fly with that airline, and wishing him many happy journeys to come.
It felt very low-key threatening, kind of '“We’re watching you, kid!”
I recently had to find a flight for S to return from Germany. It’s the end of his year abroad. One way flights - on any reasonable carrier i.e. NOT stopping in Istanbul or having a 15 hour layover or having 2 stops with a plane change - were double or more than the cost of a RT. Other than SWA, and the occasional oddity on student flight sites, I’ve fount RT’s to be a much a better deal than one ways.
Got him a non-stop for the Germany to US leg. We simply picked the cheapest return date available. So his RT costs is $1100. A one-way with the same airline would have run 3K.
So I read this on some travel site…not sure if it would really work…but it’s and interesting idea. You book the cheapest non-refundable economy fare. These usually have very high change fees or prohibit any changes. Then, if one needs to cancel the flight you upgrade the basic economy to full fare economy and pay the difference. The full fare ticket it refundable in case you cancel. You wait a certain amount of time (48 hours) then cancel the new full fare flight. The cancellation penalty tends to be less than the change penalty on a basic economy fare. And, with this method you actually get the base ticket price refunded.
Morally acceptable…you be the judge…
Weird, weird system indeed.
When I did that, I was using the return half of a ticket.
“They let you cancel or change a flight up to one hour before and you only pay the difference of the cost of the new flight if you change it (or get a refund if it is cheaper.) and no bag fees!”
When the flight needed to be changed because my child arrived too late to make it through check-in, I changed her flight 11 minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart. The stated rule at SW is (now) a change can be made up to 10 minutes before the scheduled departure.
Had I not been reading about SW here at CC (we are new to SW), I would have thought it too late to do anything but hope for a nice rep at the counter who would help my child make the change without being too persnickety about her late arrival to the airport.