Can I buy a round trip ticket without a return date?
While you do have to select a return date when you buy a full fare ticket, you can just change it when your plans change—very handy when, for example, you're trying to get home from Australia but wanting to add a stopover in Thailand.
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When you book a round-trip ticket, the airlines usually treat the outbound and return flights as a package deal. If you don't show up for the outbound flight and only use the return portion, it is known as hidden city ticketing or throwaway ticketing.
Airlines may impose certain sanctions including invoicing an additional amount up to the standard fare of the one-way alternative, deletion of mileage programs, etc. But, the probability of this is minimal, because such a breach can only be identified after the flights have departed.
One typical arrangement was the so-called “open ticket,” whereby a traveler could depart one day and return at an unspecified point in the future. Open tickets were favored especially among business travelers, who might leave home on a Monday morning, but be unable to return until they struck an important deal.
Is skiplagging illegal? No, but it's against most airlines' contracts of carriage or the rules people must follow to fly with the airline. American Airlines and Southwest Airlines both put skiplagging first on their lists of prohibited booking practices.
While you do have to select a return date when you buy a full fare ticket, you can just change it when your plans change—very handy when, for example, you're trying to get home from Australia but wanting to add a stopover in Thailand.
If an airline catches you skiplagging, in most scenarios it will punish you as per the terms and conditions of the ticket you're flying on. The punishments could range from financial penalties to restrictions on future booked travel.
“Say I want to fly to Miami from New York,” he says. “Prices are high if I book direct, but if I fly New York to Miami to Orlando, I can save $130. I could book that, pocket the savings, and then get off the plane in Miami instead of continuing on to Orlando.”
To recap: Ghosting is when a fare shows up in the search results of an OTA or flight search site like Google Flights, but when you go to book it, it's no longer available It's a bummer when a great fare ghosts, but there's nothing you can do about it.
Throwaway ticketing is purchasing a ticket with the intent to use only a portion of the included travel. This situation may arise when a passenger wants to travel only one way, but where the discounted round-trip excursion fare is cheaper than a one-way ticket.
Round-trip tickets are usually cheaper than one-ways, sometimes significantly so. NerdWallet compared fares across multiple international routes and found that, typically, buying two one-way tickets costs 20% more than a single roundtrip.
Airlines typically require that both legs of the journey be cancelled together in order to receive a refund or credit for future travel. However, if your plans have changed and you no longer need to take the return portion of your flight, some airlines may allow you to change it for a fee.
You need to contact your airline and explain the situation. If you're lucky, they'll remove the outbound flight from your reservation, keep the return flight, and not charge you any more. If you're really lucky, they'll do that, and then you'll have some leftover credit to use on a future flight. This is unlikely.
Canny passengers buy a return and throw away the return half – though technically this is breaching the rules. Every airline has buried in its terms and conditions the insistence the all flights in an itinerary must be taken.
Carriers generally don't like the practice because, for one thing, they can lose revenue. They may have been able to sell an empty seat to another passenger, or perhaps sell a more expensive nonstop ticket to the skiplagging passenger, for example.
Skiplagging may not be illegal in the eyes of the law, but it can be damaging for the passenger doing it, the airline and, to a lesser extent, other passengers. If you're caught, it could cost you. According to American Airlines' terms and conditions, this might involve: Canceling any unused part of your ticket.
He told Insider this would have been the first time someone in his family would have actually skip lagged and not flown on the final leg of their flight. Technically, skip lagging isn't illegal. But, as mentioned above, doing so is considered a violation of your airline's conditions of carriage.