Can I skip out on a return leg of an airline ticket?
I’ve done it in Europe with no problem (BA) and I have done it in the US with no problem – but in the US I did call and say to cancel my reservation. The opposite can cause problems though: missing a leg of a connecting flight either way on a return ticket: I’ve known people who wanted to go from, say, Dallas to LA – and if there was a big fare sale on – they might see that a ticket from Dallas to San Francisco connecting in LA is half as much as the Dallas-LA flight. So they would get off in LA and skip the last leg, which has resulted in the airline cancelling their entire return reservation and no refunds on the ticket.
As with sixdifferentways, I have found that I can skip return legs without any hassle, but I bet the airlines keep a record of it and will start to get snotty if you do it often. Whatever you do, though, don’t try to skip the outbound leg of a return flight to get a good price for the inbound leg. They will cancel the return leg and leave you with no ticket and no refund. Trust me on this. I don’t know that one-way flights flag you as a security risk – here in Australia, anyway. Most discounted flights are sold as one-way tickets and people routinely book one-way flights each way with different airlines depending on flight pricing and availability.
Some of the fare conditions specify you’ll pay the one way fare if you don’t take the return flight and don’t reschedule. How much luck they will have getting the money from you is obviously a different matter but they do take their yield management seriously. It’s no wonder companies like JetBlue and SouthWest are kicking their asses. Doesn’t do you a lot of good on intercontinental flights, I realize.
No problem in this case, but the airlines will get mad if you do other funny things, like rejigger your tickets for a flight you take often in order to escape the stay-over-the-weekend problems experienced by many business travelers. For example, you might buy a ticket going out on a Monday and returning a week from that Friday, then buy another ticket going back to your home on Friday and returning to your destination on Monday. In this way, you get two tickets that stay over the weekend and avoid having to pay the higher fares for business travelers that leave on a Monday and return on a Friday.
Oh, and one-ways generally flag you as a security risk, too. I have definitely found this to be the case. Good to know that security is looking out for us on this one, but only screening 5% of checked luggage, or whatever. What lackutrol described is called “back to backs” and if the airline detects you doing it one of two things will happen. 1) They will whack the entire itinerary force you to pay for a full-fare seat to complete your journey. 2) If they catch it before you begin the itinerary they will politely insist that you pay full fare for your flight or deny you boarding. This has happened to my old boss twice. An acquaintance of mine used to do this all the time. Once, he handed the ticket agent in Boston the wrong set of tickets at the beginning of his flight (the ones that had his itinerary starting in Detroit the next day with a return flight after the weekend). The ticket agent figured it out immediately, handed him the tickets back and said, “Perhaps you have a different
