Airline question - going one way

General Questions
#1

Mr. Athena and I are taking a trip to visit my parents in May. Seeing as I’m not working, I’m going to drive up there. He’s going to fly. I’m going to leave my car up there, and fly back with him (we’re moving there this summer, so leaving the car there is a smart thing).

However, when I go look at the various on line travel pages, one way travel is ridiculous! It would cost me more than twice as much to travel one way instead of round trip.

As a result, I’m thinking of booking a round trip ticket and just discarding the return flight. IE, Mr. Athena will take flight 100 from Colorado to Michigan on May 10, and returns on flight 200 on May 15, going from MI to CO. I booked myself on the same return flight - flight 200 on May 15 going from MI to CO, and also booked a return on flight 300 on May 22 from CO to MI. I will almost certainly not use the flight 300 ticket.

Any problems with this? Is there a better way to get a one way ticket?

#2

After you fly on May 15 you could call the airline and cancel the return portion of your ticket. They might give you a credit for the unused half. Maybe. Don’t hold your breath.

#3

Athena, I can’t speak from experience regarding what actually will happen if you do this - I imagine that there’s a reasonable chance you’ll get away with it just fine. But I don’t know, and I guess I should make my obligatory cautionary post detailing what could happen. :slight_smile:

Purchasing a round-trip ticket and deep-sixing the return ticket is sometimes referred to as “throw-away ticketing”, and it’s specifically not allowed by some (I suspect most or all) airlines along with similar shenanigans.

US Airways has their “terms of transportation” online (i.e., the contract the ticket-buying passenger enters into). [Here](http://www.usairways.com/customers/terms_transportation.htm#Altered, Mutilated and Invalid Tickets) is the section regarding this stuff:

They then claim that if you try any of that stuff, they reserve for themselves remedies up to and including coming after you for the fare difference.

I haven’t bothered to check, but I strongly suspect that most or all other airlines have similar policies.

How likely are they to do anything in your case? Honestly, I don’t know. I simply think it’s wise to be aware when doing something like this that they might very well have a problem with it, and probably have a legal leg to stand on if they decide to do something.

My own thoughts on this (along with those of some others) are detailed in this thread on the same topic from about a year ago.

#4

Athena, I can’t speak from experience regarding what actually will happen if you do this - I imagine that there’s a reasonable chance you’ll get away with it just fine. But I don’t know, and I guess I should make my obligatory cautionary post detailing what could happen. :slight_smile:

Purchasing a round-trip ticket and deep-sixing the return ticket is sometimes referred to as “throw-away ticketing”, and it’s specifically not allowed by some (I suspect most or all) airlines along with similar shenanigans.

US Airways has their “terms of transportation” online (i.e., the contract the ticket-buying passenger enters into). [Here](http://www.usairways.com/customers/terms_transportation.htm#Altered, Mutilated and Invalid Tickets) is the section regarding this stuff:

They then claim that if you try any of that stuff, they reserve for themselves remedies up to and including coming after you for the fare difference.

I haven’t bothered to check, but I strongly suspect that most or all other airlines have similar policies.

How likely are they to do anything in your case? Honestly, I don’t know. I simply think it’s wise to be aware when doing something like this that they might very well have a problem with it, and probably have a legal leg to stand on if they decide to do something.

My own thoughts on this (along with those of some others) are detailed in this thread on the same topic from about a year ago.

#5

Athena, I can’t speak from experience regarding what actually will happen if you do this - I imagine that there’s a reasonable chance you’ll get away with it just fine. But I don’t know, and I guess I should make my obligatory cautionary post detailing what could happen. :slight_smile:

Purchasing a round-trip ticket and deep-sixing the return ticket is sometimes referred to as “throw-away ticketing”, and it’s specifically not allowed by some (I suspect most or all) airlines along with similar shenanigans.

US Airways has their “terms of transportation” online (i.e., the contract the ticket-buying passenger enters into). [Here](http://www.usairways.com/customers/terms_transportation.htm#Altered, Mutilated and Invalid Tickets) is the section regarding this stuff:

They then claim that if you try any of that stuff, they reserve for themselves remedies up to and including coming after you for the fare difference.

I haven’t bothered to check, but I strongly suspect that most or all other airlines have similar policies.

How likely are they to do anything in your case? Honestly, I don’t know. I simply think it’s wise to be aware when doing something like this that they might very well have a problem with it, and probably have a legal leg to stand on if they decide to do something.

My own thoughts on this (along with those of some others) are detailed in this thread on the same topic from about a year ago.

#6

It was such good advice, he posted it thrice. :slight_smile:

Brad_D is right on with most airlines. To see the specific rules for the airline you have in mind, try this site.

#7

For my job I sometimes have to book airline tickets for people, and I’ve run across this a few times. It is ridiculous, no question. Although now that I’m thinking about it, it may be because the airline mostly sells round trip tickets, and a one-way means it’s harder to fill a seat on the way back. Or something. I’ve done the throw-away thing once or twice, when the alternative would have been paying hundreds of dollars more.

Anyway. It’s true that it’s usually against regulations, and they have a right to come after you if you throw away half the ticket. But how do you prove you didn’t intend to use it and just missed the plane, or something came up and you changed your mind, or whatever? I imagine that if you did it every week, they’d look into it, but I don’t think they’re going to go after you if you do it once in your life. Of course, I’m not saying you should, mind you…I never said that.:wink:

#8

So sorry for that triple post. I kept getting server timeout errors, but evidently it was going through…

:o

#9

My solution for the Timeout Problem is that I do NOT press “submit”. Instead I press “preview”, because the I can scroll down and see if my post is among the other ones which are already in the system. If not, THEN “submit” is ok.

#10

There is another option…

I told Delta once that I was in that same sort of situation, and that it was absolute lunacy, and that I wanted to do the right thing, but if they could not drop the cost of the one-way to be equal to the roundtrip, I would either go to another carrier, or do a throw-away (they didn’t have my name). The response?

“tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap tap-tap-tap-tap-tap tap-tap tap-tap-tap tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap tap-tap-tap-tap (repeat for about a minute or so) ‘OK, we can sell you ticket right now at the same price. What credit card would you like to use?’”

Try calling and asking. It might work.

#11

brad_d’s response would have been pretty much the whole picture a year ago, but I’ve heard that the airlines are now considering “devious” travel plans like throw-away ticketing a security issue. You do not want to make the Feds suspicious of you. Arrange something with the airline, or pay the higher fare.

#12

Sorry to disagree with Chronos, but I doubt if the Feds couldn’t possibly care less if you throw away your ticket, since nothing “devious” would occur prior to the date you were scheduled to return. Furthermore, the airlines can’t do a damn thing to you, either. Pay for your ticket far enough in advance in order to get the best fare, and pay with a check if you’re worried about them having your credit card number.

I was in the travel biz for 20+ years. Throwaway ticketing, point-beyond ticketing, and back-to-backs happen all the time. The one scheme where you simply can’t be caught is, you guessed it, throwaway ticketing. Unless you announce when you’re checking in that you fully intend not to use the retun, there’s no way the airlines could possibly know why you didn’t fly back. Also, that unused ticket could conceivably be used by the named person, for travel between that same city pair, in the same direction (return), upon collection of a service fee sometime in the future up to the final validity date of the fare.

In short—it’s not a problem.

#13

Conceivably you intended to make a round trip, but in the middle of your trip you suddenly became ill and could not make the return flight.

Then again, to return home, it was in the best interests of your recovery that you travel by land and not fly the return trip. Some time after arriving home you contacted the airline to wonder if you could cash in the unused portion of your ticket, apply it to a future flight, or something else.

Works for me. :slight_smile:

#14

Do it, but make sure your tickets are the same as his and that you have signed yours (if there is such a space).

As to the reason for the one ways being so expensive, the airline flies both ways. They want to fill the planes both ways and so that is why they do it that way. Try renting a car or a truck to travel one way some time and you will see the airlines aren’t alone.

#15

Ehm - yeah, but that doesn’t explain why the price is so high as to make throw-away ticketing very attractive.

If I buy a two-way ticket, my seat on the return flight is paid for (unless I fly Air France, in which case I won’t have a seat, but that’s another rant), right ? IOW, my not using the bought-and-paid-for return flight incurs absolutely no loss on the airline, on the contrary: They save the extra fuel, meals and disposable headphones needed to shuttle my mortal coil back to where I came from. Actually, by not letting me phone in a “Thanks, but no thanks”, they lose the opportunity to sell that seat to another unfortunate soul.

It’s a silly concept.

#16

Most times they are overbooked and the empty seat keeps them from needing to give travel vouchers. Silly concept indeed.

#17

If you had any idea of how many “no-shows” there are you would better understand why airlines overbook. “No-shows” may seem to you to simply relieve the oversold condition. The truth is that they are the reason for the overbooking practice. If airlines stopped booking tickets when the plane was full, they would rarely have a completely full plane.

Athena, You have a special problem that really hit me after my last post. Most people are going to use the first leg of the ticket and discard the return trip portion. You are planning to use the return, which may not work if the ticket agent catches on to the fact that you didn’t make the first leg of the flight. I would suggest you buy your round trip ticket starting out in the city you are going to leave from. If they ask you can say that you are his sister going for a visit (or some sort of story).

#18

Actually, kniz, her husband is flying CO to MI on 5/10, returning on 5/15. She is flying MI to CO on 5/15, with a possibly bogus later return to MI.
I’m guessing the part that might have confused you is that she says she is “booking the same return flight”, but really meant that she’s returning home on the same flight as her husband.

#19

I understand why they over book. However, from my perspective it seems as if they over use this practice. I’d say about 50% of the time I am flying, the airline is offering travel vouchers for people that can take a later flight. I guess more people must not show up than the number of people they need to give vouchers to, or else they would stop the practice. I guess if 10 people don’t show up and they have to give vouchers to 3, they still sold those 10 seats twice.

#20

Are you saying that it’s against airline policy to deliberately travel to and/or from slightly different airports in order to get a lower fare?! Sites like Travelocity and Expedia suggest this automatically when looking up flights!