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> There was no way I could convince her that it wasn't my fault. Perhaps there was a rigid process in place that disallowed her from helping, even though I'd make it to the second flight on time.

Yeah they generally have the capability to prevent that auto cancellation of your segments (within a certain time frame) but in this case unfortunately they were unwilling or it was too late to catch it.

It's generally to protect revenue because buying A-B-C instead of B-C can be cheaper, and hoards of people used to just segments to save money. So they just assume everyone is trying to cheat them.

> It's generally to protect revenue because buying A-B-C instead of B-C can be cheaper, and hoards of people used to just segments to save money. So they just assume everyone is trying to cheat them.

Isn't it ridiculous in the first place that flying A-B-C is less expensive than B-C? These are the pricing games airlines deliberately play to make more money out of nothing.

This is just an oversimplification though. If you had any experience about travel industry (or logistics) you would understand things much better.

Here is an example for you (from logistics): Sending a truck from Berlin to - say - Györ may cost 3 times less than sending the same truck from Györ to Berlin - even on the same exact date.

Is this because shipping companies try to make money out of nothing, for you?

I think that's a misrepresentation though because A to B is not a subset of B to A. Whereas B to C is a subset of A to B to C.

If you are answering to my Berlin->Györ example:

Yes, it is not exactly the same thing but the point is: by getting off at B you are making the B->C flight travel with a wasted (empty) seat. Which they would have preferred to either sell to someone else or use for moving a pilot or technician to C.

(Note also that this trick of getting out mid-itinerary only works if you do not have checked baggage, because that will arrive in C, and neither the airline nor the airport will be happy to reroute it to wherever you thing you want to go next.

Flying is expensive and logistically complex. Just making sure you end up where your ticket say is complicated. If you (as a customer) decide to change your plans you are making everything more complicated (and possibly preventing other customers to pay for the whole itinerary).

The actual question here is why they won't sell you a ticket for A->B for the actual cost of that leg of the A->B->C flight, and then sell the same seat for B->C to someone else.

See above: let's say that on Frankfurt-Hannover and back you get on average 52 passengers a day, and Hannover-London is more or less the same, while people flying Frankfurt-Heathrow are so numerous that direct flights are always full and therefore you need to offer FRA-HEA with a stopover to satisfy the extra request.

If you are sure that 80% of your passengers will go to Hannover only to then fly to London (and back) your prices will reflect that... and Frankfurt-Hannover cannot be lowered too much because you still has to try to reach your quota for the flight per se.

A fair comparison would not be the return, but Berlin-Györ being more expensive than Vilnius-Berlin-Györ. Is that common in logistics, in your experience?

This was a fabricated example, actually: I work in tourism not in logistic (but I have friends in that field).

My point was that to the layman this does not make any sense while if you are managing a shipping company you soon realize that some destination are more profitable because your truck that was maybe taking specialized replacements parts from A to B can easily pick up some other stuff to send back to A, while travelling in the opposite direction your truck has a high chance to travel empty on retutning to base... but you still have to pay the drivers, the fuel, the maintenance and possibly tolls.

The point some of us are making in the replies is that, while true, this is not an appropriate comparison to airline travel rules.

Do you agree there is a difference between charging more for a return, vs charging more for a leg of a compound trip?

Airlines tend to work like this: at the start of the "season" analyst define the margin for each seatbof each departure. Let's say that for Sunday flight from Venice to Hamburg, Economy, your target is 112€. (For simplicity I will discuss only a direct flight, but the same idea applies to any leg of any Itinerary).

Yield manager for that area/period has now the task to make sure he gets 112 or more on each ticket. And take in account that an unsold seat gets 0, so lowers the averge margin (which is what the yield is calculated upon).

This will soon make you realize that any chance to sell again a newly vacated seat is a boon.

So in the case of the OP the company can either assume that it was a honest mistake and he will somehow miracously get there in time to get on the second flight (3% chance?) or assume that he decided he does not care anymore, he had a serious accident, got fired, won the lottery, whatever (97%) and promptly put the seat back on sale.

The problem with a-b-c costing less than a-b is less obvious, maybe, but it has similar causes: for the airline it is more efficient to sell you the itinerary with a stopover so their pricing reflects that.

There have even been attempts to take passengers to court for getting off at the intermediate stop (they were dismissed) so it's definitely not just because the airlines are throwing a fit if you decide to change your plans.

Probably the a-b leg and the b-c legs sold alone are not very popular so they want more money to maximize the yield, while everyone wants to go a-c and return.

Of course I can understand it from their point of view. But this doesn't make it any more sensible to me as a consumer of their services.

In the aforementioned situation I wasn't trying to exploit the airline, it was a simple mistake that happened and could be easily alleviated. But the rigid processes, precisely the ones where accountability sinks, made it impossible for the humans involved to correct the mistake.

I still stand by the ridiculousness of that. If not the logistics quirks per se, then the fact that this completely unrelated matter dictated the resolution of the situation against common sense and my interest.

What makes this even worse is that presumably the PR department of that very company had to be involved later and they still spent their employees' time and money to compensate me for the mistake that could be corrected for free.

And what is the actual explanation that actually makes sense (apart from profit increase)?

I have booked flights A->B->C and got down at B because that was cheaper than booking A->B only. Not sure where this all makes sense at all.

The full explanation would take a wall of text (and still let you unconvinced because you feel entitled to do as you please, probably).

Super-condensed version: civilian flight are a pretty difficult "product" to handle efficiently. Price increases until 1 minute before closing the airplane doors, then falls to zero. On top of that, the product "provider" also needs its own product in order to move personnel and technicians all over the globe, but of course they cannot just cannibalize their own products beyond the point of profitability.

Plus they have to handle rebookings and passenger protection in cases like delays, sudden airport close-down and so on. (Have you ever been on a waiting list, btw?).

All this is pretty complicated to manage already, so they need to exert as much control as possible on yield and occupancy.

TL;DR: a flight is not a bus ride. So if you just decide to cut it short the airline will try to reuse your vacant space for whatever reason.

It seems to me that since airlines can't force you on a plane except for taking your luggage hostage, you're free to drop as long of a 'tail' as you wish. I'm wondering whether they'd put you on a black list or something for doing this consistently.

It’s called “skip lagging”. The airline can possibly try to collect money and if you do it often, ban you from flying with them.

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/23/1194998452/skiplagging-airfar...

The reason is happens is that take for instance ATL (former home). ATL is a Delta hub and has direct flights to a lot of places that other airlines don’t. Between people preferring direct flights and the lack of competition, they can charge more.

But flying out of MCO with a layover in ATl, they lose the non stop flight advantage and they have to compete with other airlines.

Also ATL sees a lot more price insensitive business travelers than MCO. Businesses aren’t going to force their salespeople and consultants on one of the low cost carriers.

>Isn't it ridiculous in the first place that flying A-B-C is less expensive than B-C?

It's no more ridiculous than something being cheaper at a liquidation store than a retail store.

OMG this stirred my memories. I was interviewing with companies in Amsterdam and Berlin. The Berlin recruiter made onward and return flight bookings for me from India. I though went to Amsterdam first on a separate flight because I was juggling the schedule. I thought it’s no big deal didn’t bother informing the recruiter of my side arrangement.

I then took a train to Berlin from Amsterdam, finished the interview and went to the airport for my return flight that was booked by the recruiter. To my absolute horror I was told that since my onward journey was a no show the whole PNR was cancelled. I felt like an idiot. Since then I double and triple check whenever I’m booking flight tickets.

Sorry to hear that. Sounds like not a lot of fun!

> So I thought that the problem could be solved by just arriving there by any other flight, which I booked almost immediately.

Why did you do that? Especially when that cost you extra money?

You should have talked to the airline directly, explained you'd missed your flight because they gave you the wrong airport, and the airline would have rebooked you and everything would have been fine. People miss flights all the time and this is an entirely normal process.

It's been standard practice for a long time if you miss a first leg, that you forfeit the rest. They're going to reuse those seats for e.g. other people who missed their original flights. It's a type of flexibility built into the whole system.

Connecting flights are super useful because you can work with the airline to reschedule the whole thing, and the airline is responsible if you can't make a connection because an earlier leg is delayed.

I truly don't understand why you would have taken it into your own hands to buy a separate replacement ticket on your own, instead of talking to the airline. Even in your second example, why didn't you work with the airline to reschedule your missed flight? Even if they for some reason can't reschedule, they will often keep your return flight valid if you have an obviously good reason (e.g. a visa issue during COVID). But you do have to contact them immediately.

I'm sorry you didn't know how all this worked, but when in doubt, contact customer service ASAP to see if they can help. Don't just go buy separate tickets on your own, and then assume later legs will still be valid. That's not how it works.

This reminds me of the quote "I know just enough to be dangerous"

I wonder how long until we have an AI on our shoulder saying "Hey why are you booking a new flight, there is a better option"

> explained you'd missed your flight because they gave you the wrong airport, and the airline would have rebooked you and everything would have been fine

Do you really believe this? There are a lot of bad airlines. Enough that a terrible airline is often the best option.

This usually just leads to getting dicked around for so long until you need to just do the original plan anyways. It only works if you have infinite time. Ideally he could just book a new flight and send them the bill

Yes, sorry for your problem but no-shows automatically invalidate everything else. If you decide to cancel part of a trip due to unexpected events, train strikes or whatever that is not directly under control of the airline itself you must contact them and make sure they will not cancel the rest (including the return flight).

Leaving aside the no-show rule, which doesn't make much sense to me, this situation is a good example of an accountability sink.

The intermediary I booked the tickets with made an obvious mistake and showed the wrong airport code. Maybe the airport opening was meant to happen earlier, and the intermediary had already updated their emails or something like that. They refused to do anything meaningful and did not even acknowledge their mistake.

The fact that I was compensated by the airline that had nothing to do with this mistake is even more astonishing to me, although they were obviously protecting their brand reputation.

I was not trying to dispute the accountability part. Btw my company was hit by the delayed opening of BER airport. Colleagues had to rebook thousands of tickets because the BER iata code had to be "retconned" to use TXL again... so I am more than happy to sympathetic with your problem, trust me.

>Leaving aside the no-show rule, which doesn't make much sense to me

A->B->C can be cheaper than B->C. If people could skip flight A, then people already in B would buy the cheaper A->B->C.

I could probably be convinced of this reason.

But why would they cancel B-A when there’s a no show for A-B? More so when there’s a few days gap between A-B and B-A? The only issue being they were booked as a single itinerary/PNR. I don’t see what cost has got anything to do with it.

Because they could use the now "vacated" seats for:

- Last minute travellers (who pay significantly higher for this)

- move their own personnel from B to A

- alleviating problems caused by overbooking, canceled flights, delayed flights or any other disruption.