tonrob

Yes - although as Bob has already said they tend not to bother unless you start taking the piss.

There is a guy on Flyertalk who an airline is threatening to sue - but he has purportedly been using the throw-away ticketing method to bring down the cost of a weekly commute and has been doing this repeatedly over a long period of time.

SEL_boy

I wonder why they (the airlines) care?

They have a paid-for seat to sell , probably at a premium, so they double dip.

If they can't sell it they save on the uneaten peanuts and inflight "meal".

The person in the neighbouring seat has an empty seat beside them (everybody's dream!) which will make that passenger (at least subconsiously) think that the airline is a comfortable one to travel with.

There's no security implication, because there's no passenger and no luggage, and they save time in boarding and luggage handling.


I would have thought they would be actively encouraging the practice of buying a ticket and not using it.

tonrob

They care because you have paid for one service and instead used another that costs more but without paying the extra. I don't agree with it, and would advocate getting round it any way possible, but this is the logic from the airlines' point of view. All airfares are market-driven and there are plenty that look illogical from the casual point of view. (There was a thread on BE recently where an Air Canada round-trip fare from Nashville to London via Toronto was around $800 less than just Toronto to London on the same flight).

Google throw-away ticketing, nested ticketing, hidden city ticketing for a number of ways in which people try to diddle the airlines out of revenue. They have teams of people employed to try to prevent this kind of thing from happening. I'm fairly sure they only really go after the hard-core offenders, so I wouldn't be too worried doing anything like this once or twice - but I certainly wouldn't be phoning the airline to draw their attention to it as others have suggested!

Ja5on

But I mean if you actually miss a flight due to being sick? or a car breaking down ect. I can't see how they could get away with charging for that.....I have heard in the past that if you tell them your not planning on using the return part then they can stop you from boarding the outgoing part of the trip.

Bob

Because most people who can't make the return flight let the airline know, they then have the opportunity to sell a last minute ticket for a premium. Have you tried buying a ticket last minute? They can cost thousands.

Ja5on

Yeah I've asked about them in the past and realized that I would only do it in an extreme emergency!

tonrob

As I said - legally they can charge. In practice for a one-off situation then I can't see them doing that - but I think this is more out of lack of control measures rather than any kind compassion, so I wouldn't be telling them anything. Just don't show up.

Airlines routinely overbook flights and have passengers on standby, so it's not as if the seat would likely go empty.