Is Continental going to punish me for evading their clutches?

February 12, 2008 9:13 AM

Is Continental airlines going to penalize me for evading their attempt to double my ticket price?

Originally booked a round trip ticket from EWR (Newark) to LAS (Las Vegas) on Continental.

Between originally booking the flight and today, I purchased a used car located near JAN (Jackson-Evers, Mississippi).

After looking into car shipper pricing, I decided it would be more economical to fly to JAN and drive the car home.

I went to continental.com, pulled up my original itinerary, queried a change in the return leg to JAN and saw my ticket price more than double from $350 to $750. Screw that.

I canceled the change and instead went to kayak.com. Through kayak, a one way ticket from LAS to JAN is $155. Continental is the carrier and it's the same exact flights (LAS to IAH, IAH to JAN) as they wanted to charge me $400 extra on top of my original round trip ticket price on the Continental site.

I booked the $155 one way flight.

Was discussing this with a co-worker and they indicated that the airline can fine you for "throw-away ticketing", i.e. not using the return leg of a round trip ticket.

Is this true?

posted by de void to travel & transportation (10 comments total)

I've never heard of it and I've blown off return legs before. Given that airlines routinely overbook flights with the expectation of a few no-shows (and are doing this more now than ever before), I'd think they'd be just peachy with you not showing up and asking for a seat. They'll just fill it with somebody from standby.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:18 AM on February 12, 2008

Eh, if it's true, I've never had it happen. Stuff comes up, people miss flights. How could they be on top of which travelers missed a flight due to their own whims vs which travelers missed a flight due to a late connection?
posted by iguanapolitico at 9:19 AM on February 12, 2008

No, not in my experience and I've done this before. If you decide to toss away the return leg of the trip that's your prerogative. What you may not be able to do is use that return leg again [i.e. if you just don't show up, they may just cancel the ticket or something else and otherwise make it a headache for you]. If you reschedule the ticket for the second part, you may incur a fee but may be able to use that second half of the trip in the future.

What airlines will do is maybe cancel a whole ticket if you dont make the second half of the first part of a two-leg round trip ticket. So if you were flying roud trip from EWR - LAS and say you were going through JAN, if you went from EWR to JAN and then didn't make the second leg of the outbound flight, you might find your return ticket cancelled. Usually you can talk to the airline and work this out in advance so this doesn't happen, but I have seen airlines be sort of jerks about this.

I travel a lot for business and it's possible I'm wrong about this, but I've never seen an airline penalize a customer on one trip for something they did on a completely separate trip. However, I do not belong to any frequent flyer clubs so YMMV.
posted by jessamyn at 9:19 AM on February 12, 2008

Don't see anything that might suggest that here, so I think you're safe.
posted by edd at 9:20 AM on February 12, 2008

I've heard about this before, but it was in the context of a travel agent. It was a while ago, but if I remember correctly, the airlines would (somehow) penalize travel agents that scheduled stuff like that routinely. Not much more than hearsay, though. (What Jessamyn says is definitely true, though, that if you miss an earlier leg of a flight, any legs after that could be cancelled.)
posted by inigo2 at 9:37 AM on February 12, 2008

my brother goes to CSU humboldt and flies home on occasion. He found a similar loophole. The only problem he encountered thus far is that he can't check baggage for security reasons. The airlines instructed him to tell the flight attendants that he would not be completing the whole ticket. Thus far, there hasn't been any issues.
The way his loophole worked, he had to buy two one-way tickets so, it might be a different story as far as being fined by the air lines.
posted by JimmyJames at 9:48 AM on February 12, 2008

They can't fine you, but, as others have stated, they can refuse to honor the remainder of that ticket. Since that's not a problem for you in this situation, I wouldn't worry about it. You should be in the clear for any separately ticketed travel, though. If you do this a lot, you might worry about them canceling your tickets, but one time should not affect you.

Similar to this is the way that airlines will discover what you are doing and cancel your tickets if you are structuring multiple tickets to avoid stay requirements or otherwise avoid paying them more money. For example, say I wanted to fly in and out of LAS from EWR on a Friday. This would normally be very expensive. And let's say that I was going to do so in a few weeks as well. It would be much cheaper to book two round trips with the flights a few weeks apart, like EWR-LAS this Friday to EWR Friday night in a few weeks, and LAS-EWR this Friday night to LAS Friday morning in a few weeks. The airlines will definitely get you for this. I've had friends get burned (tickets canceled, stuck somewhere and have to pay the full fare) for doing this.

What you're doing should be fine, though.
posted by iknowizbirfmark at 9:56 AM on February 12, 2008

You might want to show up (with no luggage) for the return trip (if it's one that's normally overbooked), and offer to be bumped, get a free flight coupon, then drive home normally. That way you're checked in, don't have to fly, AND get a free flight to use at a later date.

YMMV.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:05 AM on February 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

I travel a good bit and have had this happen to me--I believe--for this reason: I had a trip of three stops. I skipped the middle one, and decided to drive. I called to let them know that I was not making that leg of my flight and that I would be making the final leg, 2 days later, returning to Chicago. They told me that because I would miss my leg, they would also cancel my 3rd leg, if I did not rebook and pay a $100 fee to change my flight. I argued all the way to the supervisor and got them to dismiss the fare differential (like $160) but had to eat the $100 fare change because I was the one "changing' the flight. The supervisor told me that they do this because they package flights on hard to fill routes (read: unpopular places to travel) and sometimes people want to get to the stopover destination and not to the end destination. Anyway, long and short of it is, airlines do this sort of penalty--nothing after the fact--and you should make sure that they don't cancel the remainder of your trip.
posted by zerobyproxy at 11:16 AM on February 12, 2008

Just to clarify here, I could care less if the return leg of my original round trip ticket is canceled.

Originally, I was going to fly to LAS and then back to EWR on a round trip ticket.

Now, instead, I'm going to fly to LAS, then fly "back" to JAN and then drive home (near EWR).

My travel from LAS to JAN is using the $155 one way ticket I just purchased.

Continental can cancel my LAS to EWR leg of the round trip with my blessing. I'll still be home with my new-ish car, and with ~$350 more in my pocket than if I tried to re-schedule my original round trip ticket via continental's site.
posted by de void at 1:49 PM on February 12, 2008