I am planning a trip this summer flying from milwaukee to barcelona from the states and returning through london on my way back to the states to chicago. From barcelona I plan on making a trip to palma. I found a plane ticket from milwaukee-barcelona-london-chicago for a reasonable price and was going to book to and from barcelona to palma on a separate ticket. In doing the research I realized that I can fly from barcelona to palma and from palma to london rather inexpensively. So ultimately my question is if I don't board the flight from barcelona to london, because I am skipping that flight to go directly from palma to london, will I have any trouble boarding my return flight home to chicago? I looked into just booking from milwaukee to barcelona and london to chicago, but that is way more expensive than keeping the original ticket.
Posted by
York, PA
300 posts
The general rule is that if you fail to make a flight on your itinerary the follow-on flight reservations are cancelled.
Posted by
Tresana, Highlands Ranch, CO, USA
23310 posts
Absolutely, you are a no show and the assumption is that you will not make the next leg so it will be canceled. There is a current discussion going on about someone who missed the first leg of an outbound flight through a schedule problem with the airline and her return flights were also canceled leaving her somewhat stranded in Europe. Don't even thing about doing it. For the discussion see, http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/helpline/index.cfm/rurl/topic/34324/continental-cancelled-my-reservation-while-i-was-in-europe.html
Posted by
Seattle, WA, USA ☔️
6788 posts
This is a recipe for disaster.
Your entire ticket will be canceled when you fail to show up in Barcelona for your flight to London. You definitely will NOT be able to board in London, and - worse yet - unless your ticket is refundable (which most inexpensive tickets are not), you'll probably have to pay thousands of dollars on the spot to buy a last-minute, one-way ticket home.
BTW, the airlines take a very dim view of things like this and will be quite unsympathetic to your plight.
Don't do it.
Posted by
Puyallup, WA, USA
881 posts
They will cancel your flights. You will see a clause in your Contract of Carriage that says something along the lines of "all tickets/coupons, etc must be used in order, or the entire reservation is forfeit". They will cancel your flight if it's any of the major airlines.