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Unfortunately that has been happening for years, long before checked bag fees were a thing. It is likely a way to make hidden city ticketing harder.

But how is that making them any money?

Wouldn't it make more sense to sell something and not do the service?

Or the actual service cost is so little that it makes 0 difference? Does airline get to keep airport tax? Fuel savings are negligible compared with all the taxes.

Because they can sell the same seat twice.

Actually, three times, since you still need to go to your destination. They have you over a barrel.

"Hidden city" ticketing is when you want to go from City A to City B, and notice that the airline charges less money for a ticket A -> B -> C than for a ticket A -> B. So you buy the A -> B -> C ticket and get off the plane at B and never fly onward to C.

Airlines really and truly do not like it when you do this. If you have a frequent-flyer account with them, it's usually grounds to have the account terminated and all points/miles in the account confiscated, for example.

The reason why the A -> B ticket is more expensive in some cases has to do with how the airline assigns differently-priced tickets to different routes. For example, if B is a business destination and C is a popular tourist destination, the airline can use the more expensive A -> B ticket (which business travelers buy regardless, since they're using company money) to subsidize cheap tourist fares A -> B -> C. When people try to work around this by buying the cheap A -> B -> C ticket and then only flying A -> B, that hits revenue multiple times: they've flown someone A -> B for less than what they wanted to charge on that route, and now they have an empty seat going B -> C. So airlines come down on this pretty hard whenever they think it's what you're doing (they're within their rights to say that if you want to fly A -> B, they have a published fare for that, and to say that they'll cancel all your frequent-flyer perks if you won't abide by that).

Now, suppose you book a multi-segment ticket for a round trip: A -> B -> C, return C -> B -> A. And then you never show up for the initial A -> B flight. The airline has no way of knowing what you plan to do unless you actually contact them and tell them what's going on. They just know you bought a ticket and then didn't use it, so if you don't get in touch with them they're going to cancel the whole thing. They'll also cancel if you have two separate tickets booked for the same day and overlapping times, since they know it's physically impossible for you to be on both of them. The solution here is to actually call the airline, or go to their ticket desk at the airport, and explain what happened before you go buying a separate last-minute ticket to try to replace your original one. Usually they'll rebook your original ticket to a different flight, for a change fee that's cheaper than the cost of a brand-new ticket.

This makes me glad I don't bother with FF miles and other airline gimmicks.

If you fly a lot FF miles and airline status aren't gimmicks. They can make you quite a bit more comfortable. Of course, if you only fly a couple times a year, the benefits are pretty much negligible.

I don't care. Airline's goal is to extract the most money from me. My goal is to extract the most services out of airline for the least amount of money.

The question asked was how do these policies make money for the airline. I've given the answer to that question. Whether you personally care about that or not isn't really relevant, since it wasn't your question.

No, what you did is provide airline-speak justification for doing it. Airlines route optimization and pricing optimization is stuck in the early nineties. Their software is simply incapable of solving for the max profit or max revenue model. That's why hidden stop is still a thing.

The answers focusing on hidden city ticketing are just nonsense. Airlines have much better tools for dealing with that, they can just ban you afterwards.

Airlines will resell your return ticket if you neglect contacting them after missing your first flight.

If you contact them, they will not sell your return ticket. There's also a good chance that they'll switch the first flight you missed for free or at least significantly less than the cost of a new ticket.

Which airline? Did a staff member assist you in rescheduling your missed flight? I’ve never been told to ignore my missed flight and rebook a new one-way separately. Any flights I’ve been late for, the airline rebooked me for a later flight on the same reservation without any additional fees.

I’ve only had to do this once and if I recall it was just a change fee or go on standby and wait overnight. Key is talking to them.

I believe the main reason for this is to prevent people from getting cheaper tickets for short trips by making two separate reservations.

Some airlines charge higher prices if you spend only night or two in destination (probably because these are usually business trips and business people have money). So back in the days you actually booked separate return trips to the destination and only used one part of each trip.

The trouble is that airlines want to sell the same product with many prices. Get maximum price from business traveler, while still competing also for the price conscious holiday traveler.

>I believe the main reason for this is to prevent people from getting cheaper tickets for short trips by making two separate reservations.

That's a thing but it's probably not the reason for this.

The main reason for this is that you have to do something weird to end up in this situation, if you miss your first flight you'd normally contact your airline.

If you miss your first flight and say nothing to the airline, then they might rather reasonably assume that you aren't gonna show up for the return leg.

This has been going on for years, I had a worse experience. I book my christmas flights super early and had to change the outgoing flight. Found a reasonable flight on a different airline, so all i wanted to do is cancel the outgoing portion of the flight. Having been burned by a similar experience to yours in the past, so knew I had to call the airline. Website says its not possible so I call them up. Apparently they cant cancel half the flight, they have to cancel and rebook, minus change fee, plus the difference in fare - insane due to it now being close to christmas. I ended up paying money to cancel half of my flight.

I have a relative who moved to the US a couple of years ago. A one-way ticket costed _more_ than a round-trip, so he and his family bought roundtrip tickets. They flew normally but obviously never caught the flight back.

The airline later cancelled his platinum frequent flying status and charged him with the difference threatening to sue for fraud.

EDIT: typo

There is a website for that https://skiplagged.com

why would an airline care if the passengers caught their flight or not? The tickets are already paid for.

Because (in their eyes), you're gaming their fare rules. That said, I don't know how common this sort of action is. At various times, I've had to change flight plans and it was cheaper just to burn a booked return leg than pay the cancelation fee. And I've never had an issue doing so.

Did you relative notify the company that they wanted to cancel their return flight? I don't think the airline could have complained in that case.

This has been standard across airlines for more than a decade. It's to prevent people from taking advantage of cheaper legs that comprise a multi-leg trip.

Same thing happened to me only I got stranded at the airport Fuzhou, hours from my relatives and with no means to buy a ticket. If they had at least notified me of the cancellation I could have scheduled a flight in advance.

Don't fly China Southern.

Given that most (all?) airlines do the same thing, how is "Don't fly China Southern" going to help?

(BTW I've flown China Southern many times, both domestically and internationally. I've not found them to be any worse than other airlines.)

There’s an informal flat-tire rule to help travelers if they miss their flight but still show up at the airport within a reasonable time, but passengers who skip a flight entirely will find their entire ticket cancelled. The specific rule is that flight coupons must be used in order.

Happened to me once as well.

Apparently this is illegal in EU, but you'll have to fight to get your money back.

The flight reservation has changed if you're a no show for the first flight. They want a change fee. So if you don't give them a change fee, they basically apply a punitive "ok fine the whole ticket is cancelled and we keep your money".

I think it's theft also.

Based upon my experiences as a business traveller, it has been like this over 15 years.

A similar thing happen to me but on a multi-leg flight and they allowed me to board. I was told that if I was going to miss an outgoing flight, and wanted to use the return, then contact them in advance and the forfeit wouldn’t happen.

Same thing happened to me. I luckily checked the night before. I was as furious as I'm sure you were.

>The airline may have a clause somewhere on their website explaining that the above is to be expected. That doesn’t make it square for me. The behavior of the airline was, IMO, unethical.

Says everyone in every scenario where they run up against terms of services they agreed to but didn't read. I understand the sentiment, human beings don't like their assumptions being completed destroyed by reality.

And fyi, your situation would have occurred ages ago, as airlines have been canceling unused itineraries for years to prevent fare hacking, among other things.

>However, I shouldn’t have to do so or risk finding myself stranded away from home.

Because the airline should be omnipotent as to why you missed your flight and accommodate you correctly as to your uncommunicated intentions?