Part of my job is to prevent this. We are very good at cancelling your ticket based on airline rules if we know you wont get on a plane based on your other flights. Airlines ban/fine travel agents (and sometimes passengers) that abuse their rules.
Almost all my flights these days use a 3X to reduce the YQ.
The economist does a fairly good job at explaining it. http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/11/fuel-dumping
3X : method to eliminate this additional cost by adding an extra leg to the trip (which is then not taken).
The only reason I have a job is because the reservation system is old and has all sorts of scope creep to do things that aren't really airline related but were implemented to make a sale.
tl;dr I agree with the guy at the end of the story.
For a detailed explanation of airline ticket pricing, take a look at this ITA presentation:
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.itasoftware.c...
No. That is not cheating.
The airlines offer something for sale and I buy it. If buying a third ticket makes my entire trip cheaper - it would be illogical for me not to buy it. And whether or not I use it is entirely up to me.
The problem is the airlines are using inefficient and illogical pricing - for a whole host of reasons including incompetency and unwillingness to adapt to a changing marketplace.
> to keep flying some-what affordable to everyone.
Saying this keeps flying affordable for all is a "feel-good" argument - it has no substance.
They can state whatever conditions they want - that doesn't mean anyone has to follow them, they are legal, they are enforceable, or they can do anything about them.
Moreover, what if I have a three-leg trip and after the second flight learn that my sister who happens to live in city #2 is in the hospital with a 50% chance to live? I'm not taking that third flight, I'm going straight to the hospital and will consider myself lucky I ended up in that city.
There are far to many extenuating circumstances that an airline could not possibly be aware to actually have this policy.
Please read the presentation I linked to before asserting that the pricing is "illogical" and a result of "incompetency".
Through the whole creation of this system, and whatever steps it went through to end up being this complex, did nobody ever say "Guys, this is all just too freakin' complex. Why don't we simplify it so that we don't need a bunch of geniuses to figure out a way for a person to buy a ticket on one of our flights?"
I really need to find that source.
It does feel dirty, but it's worth tempering that emotional evaluation with the knowledge that, in those places where two or more airlines are competing for customers, they are very competitive indeed, and tend to operate on razor-thin margins (sometimes even negative margins! Airline profitability has been a recurring problem for those who have attempted to invest in them as businesses.) A system which is more predictable and feels less exploitative may in fact end up substantially more expensive and less convenient for all fliers (especially those now buying the cheapest tickets) and less profitable for the airlines as well.
(In Econ 101 terms, this is to say that fare regulations would have the potential of making the market less efficient and creating a deadweight loss to society.)
How good is your fine-enforcement rate against individuals?
This precludes everyone who has to check bags and everyone who is risk adverse.