Let’s say I’m flying from Wherever to Tucson, changing planes in Phoenix. But there’s some sort of calamity and the flight is diverted to Tucson. Yay me, right? Or can the airline compel me to complete the trip on pain of some sort of penalty*?
This question was inspired by a video I saw where the passenger was traveling from Lisbon to Maputo, then onto Johannesburg. But the flight was diverted to Johannesburg, but because reasons, the airline wanted him to take a flight back to Maputo and then back again to Johannesburg – likely something to do with immigration or something. The guy solved this problem by simply making a run for it (nobody followed him) and when he saw that he was in a public area, just went outside and got a cab. Like you do.
*I know there’s some swindle wherein you save money by buying tickets from, say, LA to Springfield (IL), connecting in St. Louis, but St. Louis was really where you were going all along and so you simply don’t take the flight to Springfield. The airlines are apparently quite salty about it because reasons. Obviously there’s no immigration issue at play here, same as in the Wherever to Tucson scenario, but I’m wondering if the same concept applies here.
There’s also the matter that US law, and possibly the Constitution, states that you can’t legally detain someone in America just because you want to. There has to be a crime. So if the airline tried to keep me in Tucson and force me onto a plane back to Phoenix so I could fly back to Tucson, that would be, like, unlawful detainment or something, wouldn’t it?
This might end up causing him problems if he wants to fly on that airline again, especially if he had a round trip flight (I didn’t watch the whole video). The airline can’t force you to fly extra legs if you don’t want to, but there might be consequences. A common response to passengers skip lagging is for the return flights to be cancelled. Not sure what will happen here.
Back in the days when airline pricing was more predictable (you got discounts for round trips including a Saturday overnight stay, for example) I was flying from LGA (NY LaGuardia) to MCI (Kansas City) and was diverted to STL (St. Louis) due to bad weather at Kansas City. We landed at 9pm. I went straight to the rental car counter, got a car and drove to Kansas City, because I was meeting some Very Important clients the next morning.
To add to the $300 I paid for the rental car and the $200+ for a hotel room (the one I booked had been given away when I didn’t arrive by 11pm), I found that the airline (TWA) had canceled my return booking because I had not continued on to Kansas City on the outbound leg. In their eyes I had abandoned my itinerary.
I suspect there will be some attempt in the example you gave to extract some “value” from you under what will seem like preposterous terms to normal people.
I watched the Noel Phillips video today too. The issue in this case was the airline doesn’t have carriage rights to South Africa, so they would be breaking the law if they allowed him to disembark and could be fined. Could they physically drag him back on the plane? Probably not.
This is quite different than skiplagging where you plan your route to deliberately breech the conditions of carriage under which the ticket was sold.
Another issue (which I’ve had) is checked bags. For obvious reasons they will not go rummage around for your bag if it’s in the hold. We were diverted from BOS to BDL a decade ago which was actually closer to Brattleboro, our final destination. But, bag in the hold, so off to Boston we went.
I’m pretty sure that in the US the airline can’t physically force you back onto a plane - but that doesn’t mean they can’t impose some sort of penalty. For example, let’s say I get on a cruise ship in New York that goes to Florida , the Caribbean and ends back in New York. At the first port in Florida ,I go ashore and miss the ship.The cruise line will be fined - and they will pass that fine on to me (it’s in the contract). They might ban me from that cruise line. I’d be really surprised if airline ticket contracts don’t have a similar provision allowing the airline to pass fines onto the passenger responsible for causing the fine.
In the OP’s hypothetical I am almost certain that if he explains the situation the airline will let him stay in Tucson. They are already going to have to scramble to rebook everyone else on the plane who missed connections in Phoenix, so he would be one less for them to worry about. I’ve had several similar situations, including one where after being stuck in O’Hare overnight the earliest flight the next day would make me miss the meeting I was traveling for. In that case they just let me fly back home without ever reaching my destination.
I bought a flight for my daughter from AUS to DET with a change of planes at MDW. Her actual residence was a small town about equidistant from Detroit and Chicago. So, her husband just decided to pick her up in Chicago. Since she failed to check in for the MDW->DET leg, I lost the value of that part of ticket. Had she told me she was going to do that, I could have canceled the leg and retained the value in my Southwest Airlines account. That was the only negative consequence.
I just watched that video last weekend, too. I think the reason was that the airline didn’t have “5th Freedom” rights for South Africa. Generally airlines are only allowed to carry passengers to and from their home country, Mozambique in this case, unless they’ve been granted premission by a third country. By getting off the plane in Johannesburg, he flew from Portugal to South Africa on an airline that was based in neither country, and the airline probably technically violated South African law by allowing him to do so.
The guy in that YouTube video wasn’t skiplagging – he fully indented to fly to Maputo and connect onward to Johannesburg (In fact I suspect he likely paid more than had to specifically because he wanted to fly an unusual route for his YouTube video). His flight just coincidentally ended up diverting to Johannesburg due to weather, and he decided to just stay there, because if he went back to Maputo he would have missed his connecting flight anyway.
Like I said above, the airline almost certainly wasn’t allowed to carry passengers to South Africa from anywhere other than Mozambique, and since he boarded in Portugal they couldn’t allow him to stay there.
I don’t think you would have had a problem if you told them what you were doing. A long time ago I had a flight from Chicago to Newark with a connection there to a small airline that flew to Princeton. It turned out that we were driving to New England, so my wife drove to Newark and I got off there. I did cancel the other flight. I asked my travel office if we were due a refund, and it turned out that the Chicago to Princeton flight was cheaper than the Chicago to Newark one, thanks to a credit for switching.
Completely agree, but the airline has limited tools to deal with it. They can’t physically force the passenger to return, but they can use any future flights on the airline as a stick to try to avoid a fine or worse.
This almost happened to me once, but I was forced to travel to the plane’s final destination.
I was on a flight into Denver, but DEN was closed due to weather, so after circling for awhile we landed at Ft. Collins/Loveland (FNL) to wait out the weather, and take on some fuel.
FNL was closer to my home than DEN, and I had no checked luggage, so I asked if I could just leave. They said no. The primary reason was because we never left the plane. We just waited onboard. It might have been an international flight, in which case the lack of customs and immigration at FNL would have made it a hard no, even if we’d left the plane.
I was on a flight from Dallas to Brisbane, Australia. Due to headwinds, the flight was diverted to Aukland for fuel. Several passengers who were due to take a connecting from Brisbane to Aukland elected to de-plane with the airlines full blessing. The only caveat was that their luggage would continue to Brisbane and then get forwarded to their connecting flight.
I did tell them, but as you can imagine it was pretty chaotic and I needed to get going, so who knows what they recorded. In those days the Corporate travel agents, Carlson Wagon Lit, dealt with the airlines.
I’ve always wondered if the passengers who waited got to Kansas City that night or the next day.
One time our flight from Buffalo to Boston was canceled and again I decided to drive the 8 hours instead of waiting an indeterminate time for an alternative (none of the same day options were direct flights, I’d be doing things like going Buffalo-Dulles-Boston or Buffalo-Detroit-Boston).
Some other people we were with decided to wait and got to Boston the next day after waiting at the airport for over 12 hours.
I flew from L.A. to New Orleans one time in the '90s, when the aircraft was diverted to Baton Rouge due to severe thunderstorms. We had to sit on the ground at Baton Rouge in an airplane without air conditioning, full toilets, no ice, etc. Even though there were people on board whose final destination was Baton Rouge, they were not allowed off of the aircraft. The only way for someone to get off was for him or her to declare a medical emergency. In that case the person would be removed by EMTs and transported to a hospital for evaluation. The explanation was that the airline did not have a contract with the airport to operate there.
I don’t know if things have changed in the last 30 years, but ISTM that allowing passengers to deplane is a win-win-win situation. The passengers win because they’re where they want to be. The passengers who stay on board win by enjoying a less-crowded cabin. The airline wins because it doesn’t have to compensate the deplaning passengers for the delay.