Using Hidden City and Throwaway Ticketing to Save Big Money on Airfare

Back in January I explained how to use hidden city and throwaway ticketing to save big money on airfare.

Airlines often price tickets from one city to another through a hub cheaper than flights that terminate at the hub.

Flying United New York to Milwaukee through Chicago is often much cheaper than just flying New York to Chicago.

But if you get off the plane in Chicago and don’t board your connection to Milwaukee, you’ve potentially saved yourself a lot of money. This is called hidden city ticketing.

Most people think they’ve purchased two flights, New York to Chicago and Chicago to Milwaukee. They only take one, but the airlines still got paid for both.

The airlines don’t like it. And instead of seeing themselves as selling you a ticket from New York to Chicago to Milwaukee with you having purchased both flights, they see themselves as selling a ticket from New York to Milwaukee — and you’re using that fare to improperly fly New York to Chicago instead.

No great secrets being let out of the bag here by the way, this was written up by Nate Silver in the New York Times.

And it certainly isn’t illegal to buy a ticket and not fly all of the segments (although Silver recommends not actually lying about what you’re doing if caught since that could technically introduce a fraud element).

As I explained in January,

The practice violates the contract of carriage of most airlines (not Southwest, and up until a few years ago tossing the return portion of a trip and flying only one way wasn’t a violation of United’s but that’s been updated). And a travel agent who consistently sells tickets where final segments are unflown can get a debit memo and owe money, which they need to pay in order to continue selling tickets on the airline (and indeed not to jeopardize their access to the computer reservation system itself). But that’s a contractual and ongoing business issue between airline, reservation system, and agent..

The most that can happen to a passenger is likely that they could theoretically be banned from an airline. Most people don’t care because they aren’t loyal to an airline to begin with. The customer more likely could see consequences to their mileage account. This is something that could happen through repeated and frequent use of the technique, including your mileage number in the reservation. If you consistently buy one-way tickets through Chicago to Milwaukee and get off in Chicago (Milwaukee is often a much cheaper market), and give your United Mileage Plus number each time you do it, United might have a problem with you. United might send you a warning letter. They might threaten your miles. They could even close your account.

On the other hand, they’ll have a more difficult time penalizing your miles if you credit to partner airline programs. It will even be harder, though not impossible, to track. I don’t advise doing this every week. But I’ve never personally known anyone that’s done it only a few times a year per airline to have problems.

If you’re not breaking the law, and the airline can’t reasonably ‘go after you’ for doing this especially for doing it infrequently, what are the real risks involved?

  • Do this only as the last segment of a reservation. Only throw away the final leg of a roundtrip. Or book two one-ways if you want to do a throwaway in each direction. Because when you miss a flight, the airline is likely to cancel the rest of your itinerary.

  • Don’t check luggage. Most airlines used to let you ‘short check’ baggage, or check it to an intermediate stop and not your final destination. This isn’t usually allowed any longer. United certainly stopped permitting the practice a couple of years ago. If you check bags, your bags will go to the final city on your ticket, you will not. So this only works with carryons (except for international flights arriving in the U.S. and a few other countries where you have to pick up your bags on arrival and walk them through customs and then drop them back off. If you’re checked to a domestic destination other than the one you arrive at in the U.S., you usually just won’t drop your bags back off.)
  • Don’t let yourself gate check luggage. For the same reason you don’t want to check a bag, you don’t want to board the plane and find no overhead space and a flight attendant telling you they’ll check your bag to your final destination. That’s not okay, since you aren’t going to your final destination. So these tickets work best if you have status or an upgrade, or at least can board in the middle of the pack and not be the last to board. But if you are last to board, there’s no overhead space, and they won’t let you hunt and peck for space, then you need an excuse why you either need to get the carryon on the plane or you need them only to check it to your intermediate destination. In the former case, tell them you’re connecting on a separate ticket to a carrier they’ve never heard of. In the latter, just tell them your final destination is where the aircraft is landing. And they’re more likely to check it to your planned arrival city rather than your reservation’s final destination.
  • There’s still a risk of irregular operations. If your flight cancels, the airline might offer to send you to your ‘final destination’ via some other connecting city. That obviously won’t work for you. I’d suggest saying that the connecting city is important, you’re meeting folks in the airline’s club lounge there. Add some color, maybe you’re having an affair there (and only need a 45 minute connection in one fo the conference rooms?). Agents are usually pretty accommodating during irregular operations and will give you an itinerary that works for you if anything is available that suits you. But you’ll need to be proactive about the rebooking.

So how do you go about finding the savings with this technique?

I search one-way using ITA Software Matrix, although novice users may prefer Hipmunk.

I specifying my real starting city, and then I let the system find fares to a variety of cities that I know to be generally cheap, and might connect through the city I actually want to go to. And I may tell the website to search for other airports within 300 miles of the one I’ve specified too, why not?

And I’ll even limit the search by specifying my connecting point as the city I want to go to.

Cheap cities on the East Coast might be Providence, Atlanta (as a connection, not on Delta), Orlando, Jacksonville (Florida), Charlotte, Raleigh, New York (various airports). In the Midwest Milwaukee is a good one. On the West Coast one often finds good fares to Tucson, Las Vegas, and Orange County.

The cities you’ll try depend on whet’s in the same general region of the country as where you’re actually going (and sometimes connecting through the Northeast to Florida works great, actually).

So here’s a real world example. Flying DC to Phoenix almost three months from now non-stop on US Airways without a Saturday night stay is pricing at $1574!

But searching for DC through Phoenix to Long Beach, Orange County, Tucson, Oakland, San Jose, and Las Vegas I stumble upon the DC-Phoenix flight I want (combined with a Tucson flight I don’t) for $159.

And searching for Phoenix through DC to Charlotte, Raleigh, Orlando, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Providence, Boston, and New York LaGuardia I stumble upon the Phoenix – DC non-stop flight that I want (combined with a connecting flight to Providence or New York LaGuardia that I don’t) for $186.

We see that the $1574 itinerary can be purchased for $345.

My favorite version of this, sadly, doesn’t exist anymore. United used to have bus service from San Jose to San Francisco. Back then a cross country flight in and out of San Francisco without a Saturday stay was usually over $2000. But that same cross country flight through San Francisco to and from San Jose was about $600. The bus segment required a paper ticket, you yanked out the San Jose bus segments and checked in in San Francisco with no worries. (You would grab your bags from the bus and re-check in anyway, so you could have checked bags with this strategy even.) What’s more, you’d even earn the miles for the bus segment…

Throwaway ticketing is most commonly buying a roundtrip ticket instead of a one-way and ‘throwing away’ the return. It’s very rarely the case in the U.S. anymore that a roundtrip is cheaper than a one-way. but it’s still quite common in Europe — where one-ways will only price as full fare, with the major airlines you’ll often find it advantageous to book a roundtrip instead. Here the caveats about checked luggage don’t apply..

I’ll be interested to hear from folks that have done this and had success. And I’m always open to criticism from anyone who feels like these techniques aren’t things folks should do, or aren’t things I should share. What are your thoughts and experiences?

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. […] I won’t go through a full explanation here because Gary at View from the Wing has done a fantastic job of doing that already, but I’ll give a basic overview in case you don’t feel like […]

Comments

  1. Gary, do you think you could post a full list of the hub airports dominated by a single carrier, as an easy reference for people to check going forward as they plan travel? The NY times article mentions Atlanta, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, Detroit, Cincinnati or Chicago O’Hare, but I’m sure that’s not all of them. A list of the lower-priced options to look for as the 2nd leg (after the stop in the hub) probably wouldn’t be necessary, people should be able to brainstorm once they know if their actual destination is an option for this strategy.
    Thanks!

  2. If you wanna be a “good boy”, you can call the airline as soon as you land, and ask for a change (e.g. Say that you feel like staying a bit longer in that “connection” city). If they ask for a fee, simply say that you don’t wanna pay the fee, so you want to cancel the rest. That way, the gate agent won’t be calling your name multiple times.

  3. Just yesterday I managed to save from ~$300 to only $177 one-way thanks to Gary’s advice

  4. On my most recent connection continuing on from ORD to MKE (yes, I was actually going home to MKE), the United kiosk at airport (BWI) check-in said they were looking for volunteers on the ORD-MKE segment due to possible oversell. The ORD-MKE flight turned out to be 30-40% empty. Quite a few people “missed” the connection. (There were no weather issues that no or any UA operational issues–at least no more operational issues than happen virtually everyday with the “new” CO/UA).

  5. Used to do this sort of thing all the time, but now I mostly either just suck it up (and pay) or fly on to a destination a couple hours from where I’m actually going.

    My old “go to” for this sort of deal was LAX/SNA-DTW on NW. Without a Saturday night stay, the fare was usually $1900. With a Saturday night stay was $150-$300. I’d book an LAX-DTW-LAX and a DTW-LAX-DTW for $500 and be pretty pleased with myself. If I had a couple of trips coming up, I’d sometimes even be able to schedule all the legs so as to use them all.

  6. Hi
    purchased Genova to Madrid (via Munich) roundtrip, even though only needed one way
    One way priced at 800 usd, roundtrip purchased at 230 usd

    purchased sao paulo to buenos aires on qatar airways, roundtrip 300 usd, one way 500 usd, so again purchased one way and threw the return

  7. PDX-EWR on United sells for $174 in 9/5. But you can buy PDX-ZFV (Philadelphia Amtrak station) on United for $106 – second leg is on United 6666 operated by Amtrak.

  8. Gary – I just booked one way Southwest award tickets for Xmas 2013 from MDW – FLL at 12,540 points each, then one way award tickets back to MCI that connects in MDW. My family will deplane in MDW where we live making this a savings of 10,000 points. Three flying over X mas on SW for a total of 46,000 points is a good score. Here’s for hoping no irrops!

  9. Question on what I think is a new twist on this. I have an AA Miles award flight that I need to skip the last of 4 legs – the last leg is Helsinki to Vilnius (Finnair), which leaves the next morning after an overnight layover in Helsinki. What makes my situation unusual is that I have another Finnair flight (to Osaka, also award flight from AA miles) in the evening of the same day as the leg that I need to skip. These are separate itineraries which were booked at different times. The one flight was booked with my miles and the other was booked with my wife’s miles, but the passengers are obviously the same. Could skipping that Vilnius leg somehow screw up our international flight out of Helsinki? Is there someway that we can get them to just drop that Vilnius leg for us, officially? Thanks!

  10. I was wondering if anyone knew if the hidden city ploy would be a good idea for a round trip international ticket. I’m visiting a friend for a week in Spain, but I want to go to Amsterdam as well. I found a flight from my home city in the US and it just so happens that the cheapest ticket I found stops in Amsterdam before going to Spain. I don’t want to go from Amsterdam to Spain and then back to Amsterdam, but I don’t know if it would be a good idea to just stay in Amsterdam or if that would even be plausible.

  11. it won’t work since if you do not board your amsterdam spain flight the rest of the itin will be cancelled

    why dont you price the ticket with the layover in amsterdam? or connecting in amsterdam and going to spain for a week?

    if you actaully want to go to both destinations than you are not throwing away any segment, so this article is the wrong one for you

  12. I found this “hack” out on accident last summer, just had my family pick up my bags at the final destination. Maybe I don’t understand charter ticketing so well, but it seems that pricing that reflects resource usage makes the most sense to me. Therefore, I feel no guilt at all for exploiting the system!

  13. lol I was so thinking about doing this for a future travel. I was like whats the worst that could happen if I just didn’t show up for the next flight. You have explained that plus much much more! Thank-you

  14. Hi Gary-
    I am having a hard time maneuvering my flights. I want to fly Austin, TX to Minneapolis. Do you know of any good routes or am I just SOL?

  15. @Mary since this works best where a hub is on one end you’re probably looking at Delta .. figuring out what cities might be cheap to fly through rather than to Minneapolis. Usually there are cheaper markets near the hub. They can be 800 miles away though. The MSP hub is an odd one, lots of small markets with little competition.

  16. How do you give the connection point on a one-way search on ITA? I wanted to find pricing for SJC-NYC by adding NYC as connecting point. Thanks.

  17. Sounds dishonest….which I find…bites you in the butt everytime. The agents on the other side of the counter are protective of their airline ( most are)and sometimes get paid $25 for turning you in on those throwaway and hidden city tickets. We are familiar with them and so many times irregular operations will show us what you are doing. Then, it cannot be said out loud but our perception of this nice person in front of us changes to “he’s a scammer”. and we all talk about these customers later.

  18. Gary price to HNL are fixed high out of LAX but the majors match AK’s cheap SAN-HNL fares by routing pax via LAX. So will AA be watching for me to throw away my last segment LAX-SAN and possibly dun my miles for the rt? Thx.

  19. A girl I met wants me to send her ($500.00), the other half of the cost of the ticket to fly to me. She says she wants to add it to her $ 500.00 in order to pay for the ticket, ($ 1,000.00).
    Is there some form of escrow that can be used to keep my $ 500.00 safe from her just taking/keeping it ?

  20. Recently used this tactic on a flight from Panama to Colombia. Jumped off at Bogota, cleared customs, collected baggage and did not complete flight connection to Cali.

  21. ” Singapore Air – $539: Seattle – Bangkok, Thailand. Roundtrip,..” The flight obviously has a stopover in Singapore, being its hub. If intended destination is Singapore, there is probably no problem burning the SIN-BKK leg but can one board from Singapore on the inbound to Seattle?

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