One of the most common questions I receive at Award Expert is can I just skip that segment? The answer is no, unless it is the last segment of the ticket.
The question is innately reasonable. Most people assume their flights are like individual commodities and can be used (or not used) as desired. And such logic make sense, on the surface. After all, if I pay for Chicago to New York to London, why does it matter if I want to skip the Chicago to New York segment and start in New York? That’s actually costing the airline less because I am taking one less flight, right?
But that is not the way airline pricing works. The distance (or number of segments) of the trip is not correlated to the price. A Pittsburgh to Los Angeles flight (2,136 miles) will often be much cheaper than a Pittsburgh to New York flight (340 miles). It’s all about supply and demand between origin and destination. In the opaque world of airline pricing, they sell you tickets between two points, not to the stops in between.
Thus, airlines have a vested interest in ensuring that you do not take advantage of more attractive fares to skip segments. The result: if you skip a segment in the middle of a trip, the remaining segments will be cancelled.
Don’t fight it. It is the way this it. Just accept it.
Exceptions
Of course there are exceptions. Let’s say you’re flying from Indianapolis to Chicago to Brussels and your Indianapolis to Chicago flight is delayed. If you decide to drive and let the airline know what you are doing, they will make a note on your reservation not to cancel further segments.
Some low-cost-carirers, like Ryanair, will not penalize you if you skip a flight as part of a larger itinerary. One loyalty programs, Lufthansa Miles & More, will let you fly segments out of order for a fee.
The Segment You Can Skip
Remember the rule: if you skip a segment in the middle of a trip, the remaining segments will be cancelled. But what if you just want to skip the last segment? That’s no problem, because there will be no further segments to cancel.
Be careful, though. If you have a round-trip ticket booked you cannot skip the last segment of your outbound unless you are willing to accept your return also being canceled.
When done strategically to save money, this practice is called “Hidden City Ticketing” or “Throw Away ticketing”. While I personally do not engage in these practices for fear of my United MileagePlus account being shut down, I’ve never heard of anyone actually being shut down or sent a bill for engaging in these practices. They are not illegal, just prohibited by the fare rules. The general consensus is that as long as you don’t make a habit of skipping last segments, you’ll never have a problem.
CONCLUSION
While very clear to many, the number of times I’ve been asked recently about skipping segments indicates this is a point of confusion. Remember, once you skip a segment the rest of your trip will be canceled.
my experience with HCT is that usually at very very last minute the savings are super amplified
say AAA-BBB is the nonstop flight you want but it’s mostly hub captive and as a result has fare restrictions that have fares spike up from $175-270 normally to $600’s within 3 days of purchase.
then with HCT, booking AAA-BBB-CCC including that exact same first nonstop flight becomes like $85-120 due to competition against ULCCs like Spirit or Frontier.
The M&M exception is due to the local law requirement – you can do the same on revenue tickets, it will cost you dearly though (calculated segment by segment).
I imagine BA Award should work the same.
On of the proposed points of the EU261 regulation revision is allowing consumer to fly the return segment of a trip if they missed the outbound by the way (which is not only common sense but it also doesn’t throw too big of wrench in the airline pricing gears).
I had an unusual and particularly galling example of this issue. I was flying on United from Orlando to Denver, changing to a United Express flight to Aspen. It was a weather-confused day, with many flights cancelled all over the system, and a whole string of Aspen flights had been cancelled. There were a few hundred Aspen passengers who were told to get in line at Customer Service, and after I was in line for three hours it was announced that all Aspen passengers were to report to a gate to get busses to Aspen. We got there on several busses, and I didn’t think anything more about it, until my day of departure when I found that United had cancelled my return ticket because I had not “used” the Denver to Aspen segment. I argued that I did use it because United got me on a bus to that city with other United passengers, but the agent just shrugged because that is the way the computer works. I have been very paranoid about that sort of issue ever since.
Nice article.. I just went through this hassle in Berlin.. I’m lucky a service agent saved me from my cancelled return trip.
The article says: “It’s all about supply and demand between origin and destination. In the opaque world of airline pricing, they sell you tickets between two points, not to the stops in between.
Thus, airlines have a vested interest in ensuring that you do not take advantage of more attractive fares to skip segments.”
I get that price is set by supply and demand, not distance, but I still don’t understand how airlines benefit from locking us in.
If Airline A offers Toronto to Rome with a stopover in Milan for $700 roundtrip,
and 3 days before the return trip Airline B offers Milan to Toronto for some insanely low price – let’s say $5 – Airline A doesn’t lose if I buy the ticket from Airline B.
Why do airlines have a vested interest in ensuring we don’t take advantage of more attractive fares to skip segments?
Because they think bigger picture and also believe that when passengers skip segments they cannot re-sell those segments…they often go to non-rev flyers, not revenue flyers.
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