Can I miss the 2nd leg of a one way flight if I am taking another one way flight home?
I am flying to Cleveland for the holidays. There are two options for flights. A. Fly to direct to Cleveland B. Fly to Pittsburgh Option B is much cheaper, but the odd thing is that the flight to Pittsburgh actually stops in Cleveland, before going on to Pittsburgh. Can I just get off the plane in Cleveland and skip the leg to Pittsburgh? I want to book this flight one way and then book a separate one way home on the same airline. Normally, I believe skipping the 2nd leg of a flight would cancel my return flight, but is this the case with one way flights that are booked separately? Are there any other issues if I was to just get off the plane in Cleveland and skip the 2nd flight I will only have carry on bags, so that is not a concern.
Air Travel - 4 Answers
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1 :
I wouldn't worry about it. It shouldn't cancel your other leg of the trip. They book them both as seperate flights.
2 :
Doing what you want to do -- buying a ticket and only using part -- does result in cancellation of the skipped legs, including the return flights if there are any. Since you're only flying one-way, there obviously isn't a return trip to lose. There are, however, two issues to keep in mind: 1) On most airlines, what you're doing is technically against the rules -- the practice of buying a cheaper ticket with the intention of using only part is called "throwaway ticketing," and can, if discovered, result in the airline charging the difference between what you paid and the cost of the ticket that was actually flown. The odds of getting caught doing this are extremely slim if done on a merely occasional basis, so you probably don't want to do anything to tip them off (such as calling them to tell them you want to cancel the back half of the ticket). The penalties are out there, though, even if the risk of actually dealing with them are remote. 2) The larger risk in doing this is the fact that your airline has the obligation to get you, based on the ticket you purchased, to Pittsburgh, not to Cleveland. If delays or other issues make it necessary for the airline to reroute you, then they can find any way possible to get you to Cleveland -- even if it's a connection through another airport or on another airline. If this happens, you'll either need to find a way to get from Pittsburgh to Cleveland, or you'll have to own up to the airline and explain what you were doing. (That's a sure-fire way to get charged the extra amount to get you only to Cleveland.)
3 :
Are you sure that 2 one way tickets around the holidays is cheaper than a round trip ticket? That doesn't sound right.
4 :
I would suspect that it depends on the airline, so I would call and ask. However, one big comment related to this. If you do get off at Cleveland, make SURE the airline knows what you're doing - for security reasons. If you have checked bags, they will have to deplane the bags. Not surprisingly, one of the classic airline bomb scenarios involves a passenger who gets on the flight in city A, gets off in city B and the plane crashes between city B and C. ...and by classic, I mean 1955 or so - check out United Flight 629 as well as others. http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/planes/q0283.shtml
