Save money flying from New York and San Francisco
flyshortcut.comDon't airline companies really frown upon this practice? I can't recall if they can actually do something about it though.
If you do this for a roundtrip purchase, they will cancel the remaining legs of your flight.
They certainly frown, but only if they know you're doing it. Don't lie if they ask, but no need to offer it up. You can also book without using your frequent flyer info to be safe.
If you do book with your frequent flyer number, their revenue department will revoke any rewards/mileage you have if a trend develops.
I don't understand, why does airline frown upon this practice? What do they lose from you not going to one of their flight?
Revenue!
But you have already paid for the ticket, isn't it?
The other question I'm wondering would be, how could it be possible in that case that A -> B directly would be more expensive than A -> B ->C ?
A->B->C most likely is more expensive to the airline than A->B, but cost to the airline is just one factor in determining how much the airline charges the consumer. B could be a more desirable destination than C, and so people are willing to pay more for trips to B.
Not sure - perhaps the airline is promoting that route or that route is already popular. Often the "C" segment takes you to the Caribbean or to Las Vegas. Price is not always correlated with distance flown.
If you had bought the trip you actually wanted to take, you would have paid more. Further, it would have left a seat open on the second flight which they might have sold to somebody else, making even more money still.
Of course, the second flight probably isn't 100% sold out, and you might have gone with a competitor or not taken the trip at a higher price. But they don't necessarily see that, much like music labels don't necessarily understand that every instance of piracy is not a lost sale.
I see two potential problems.
First, you probably shouldn't do this as the first part of a roundtrip ticket, as the airline can cancel your return if they think you're abusing the system. That may not be important for many people, but it's there.
Second, if something goes wrong (bad weather, can't find a pilot, whatever) the airline may reroute you through a different city, completely screwing up your plan. They don't really care where you connect, and as far as they know neither do you. If you book, say, JFK->LAX->SFO and the engine falls off your JFK->LAX plane while sitting at the gate, they might move you to a route like JFK->ORD->SFO, and saying, "but, but, I was going to leave the airport at LAX and skip my flight to SFO" is probably not going to get much sympathy from the agent.
Third,
the overhead compartments are full and you have to check your bag.
Just be first in line to board the plane.
Don't they give it back to you at the end of the flight when that happens? In my experience, only bags checked during checkin get routed through connections.
Very true, my co-founder discovered this the hard way.
A note on the roundtrip booking - correct, you should never book roundtrip. Your roundtrip should be made up from two one-way bookings.
lol I am the aforementioned co-founder. This is definitely a flight booking hack with costs and benefits that have to be weighed. I don't personally book this way for savings of just 10-20 bucks. When it's something like $80 in savings or more (I saved >30% on my last flight), you start to think maybe the expected value will come out positive, even with all risks considered.
FYI doing this is a great way to get your mileage balance cancelled if you're a frequent flyer.
Cheap way for airline to write off points liability.
I have just been looking at tickets to the US. My intent was to stop for a few days in Japan or Malaysia, and book the first and second leg separately.
I checked flying Tokyo->Minneapolis and was given a few prices, in the $1100 range without having to rely on sprint etc.
I then checked KL->Minneapolis and got a price for $700 that flew first to Tokyo with AA. When I tried buying just the Tokyo->Minneapolis leg for the same flights I was quoted $4000!
Airplane routing and pricing is really unclear and deliberately opaque.
While I am glad this service exhists, it reminds me of early SEO and search engine wars. If this gets popular enough, this loophole will be closed.
You require me to share on Facebook before you show me flight info? That's a great way to get me to close the site and never come back, never mind all the other risks associated with hidden city travel.
You can "share" it with yourself. Then go to Facebook and unshare it if you don't feel like your friends seeing you sharing a page.
Interesting hack, but it means that you can't check any luggage. That's a non-trivial drawback.
Ya, absolutely. Make sure you have carry-on only. I've done it before where I've convinced the agent to let my bag off at the mid-point but I'm pretty sure I got lucky...
The site doesn't work for me -- maybe it's overloaded. I shared on Facebook and it just gets stuck confirming forever.
This looks great. Any plans to open it up to international routes?
holy crap this is so awesome. I've been on a kick to try to hack the shitty experience that is flying domestically in the US, this is very inspirational.
Only if you don't have any checked baggage!
Site doesn't work for me