Anyone ever have any luck doing this?

This is a bit out there....I'm flying to San Diego on Sunday afternoon out of STL, and as luck would have it, I'm going through Vegas. I have a 1.5 hour layover.

I need to be in SD on Monday, but nothing pressing. Anyone ever jump off their original flight and stay in the layover city? I'd love to spend a haphazard night in Vegas....kinda do an all-nighter and then hit SD Monday morning.

I'm on SWA. Guessing there will be change flight fees involved unless they're oversold, but any advice you all would have to make this happen is most welcome.

Thanks.

 

I am not sure but others have done this as a way to get a cheaper flight. so if there intention all along was just to go from STL to vegas, they would shop around to other places like LA or SD that have a layover in vegas and then just not get on the last leg of the trip. Make sure you do not have checked luggage though lol Might have better luck in travel forums as well

 

I am not sure how SWA feels about this (called hidden city ticketing) but I know the legacies frown upon it and if they catch you they can wipe out your frequent flyer account.

Best bet would be to call SWA and just move up your SD flight until the following day on your original itinerary.

 

This is SkipLagged's entire business. They dig around United's website looking for situations where if I flew A -> B -> C it would be cheaper than if I just flew A -> B. United really hates it.

What you're asking for is really a bit different though. You just want to extend your layover from 1.5 hours to 12-16 hours or so and still get on a SWA plane on to SAN, right? I don't know Southwest super well, but considering they advertise "NO CHANGE FEES" this should be no problem. You may be responsible for any fare difference between the cost of the two flights. But call and see what they can do for you.

 

~sigh~
Makes me miss the "old days", pre-internet, when travel had to be booked through a travel agent...I used to book long layovers in Vegas...actually book them that way! I'd make the "next" connection only it would be on the next day.
For SW? If it's a 'plane-change' situation, I would call and ask if you could book your connecting flight for the next day. If it's a direct flight, with only a stop in Vegas, then you may be better off booking a multi-city flight.
Calling them would be the best bet here, either way, but I would think that, with a plane change flight, they wouldn't care. Fare difference shouldn't be a factor though, as your "original" travel date is Sunday & you'd be changing to Monday...Sunday is by far their most oversold day of the week out of Vegas.

 

You have two different issues here.

1 - Getting off in Vegas and not continuing on. Yes, you can do that. If anyone ever asks, you got sick and could not continue. Easy stuff.

2 - Now you have to get to San Diego. Your original flight can not be changed to have an overnight "layover". You can not buy a ticket that lands in one city, then do another flight the next day. That is two flights. Your original ticket is for one flight - that just happens to change planes in LAS.

You might have to buy a new ticket from LAS- SD

 

Thank you all for the input. I called SWA. Nostresshere is correct. I would have 2 flights to get to SD instead of the 1 I booked. They said they'd have to do a one way from STL-LAS and then another from LAS-SAN, and it's $450 to change. If it were $200, I'd jump on it...$450 is a little steep for what would amount to 16 hours in Vegas. If they're oversold and looking for volunteers, I'm sprinting to the desk, but given the amount of flights, I'm guessing that won't be an option. Will still check when I get there. Maybe I'll find a fellow degenerate and they'll feel sorry for me.

Appreciate it, folks. Thanks.

 

How much is a LAS-SD ticket, which of course is now going to be higher since it is last minute. Check other airlines as well.

You can still just get off the plane in LAS and mis connect.

Another thought...not sure what time you get in to LAS - but by chance is the SD flight the last one of the day? If you miss it, they MIGHT just put you on the next one in the morning.

 

This will be a problem for the OP though. If he misses the flight out of Vegas, the rest of his itinerary will be cancelled so he will have to buy a new flight from LAS to SAN along with a flight from SAN back home. When you buy the new tickets, it would be at a much higher airfare as you'd be flying out the same day or even the next day. Also, you can be chosen as a selectee by TSA then because it makes it appear that you're flying under suspicious circumstances. Most airlines won't hit you with the fare difference in these cases, but it is possible for them to do so.

The "No Change Fees" is for changes that you call and inform them of, but they aren't going to allow you to do what you plan to do at the price you plan to do it with. You can't even really claim that you just innocently missed your flight because they'll know when your flight into LAS arrived and will know if you had plenty of time to make the flight out of LAS. Plus, if you "miss" the flight, the person should still show up sometime to check out their other options, not 12-16 hours later.

Anyway, don't do it OP. It may appear that your saving money, but it can get really expensive.

 

What about this? I hop off in LV. I buy a one way Vegas to SD for $231. My return home flight is a separate one way (different conf #) out of Orange County to STL. Doable?

 

Do you mean keep your existing ticket and get off in LV and do what you just mentioned?

You can obviously do it if you wish, BUT you still can't have checked baggage bc your bags will go to SD so you wouldn't have access to them in LV.

When you book a flight such as A--->B and you see a cheaper flight that's listed as A----->C---->B, there is a reason for those flights being cheaper. The biggest reason is generally demand for the A---->B flight versus the demand of the C---->B flight. In your case, Southwest may not have a huge demand for the St. Louis to San Diego flight, but there is a huge command for the St. Louis to Las Vegas flight and the Las Vegas to San Diego flight. So in order to offer cheaper fares from St. Louis to San Diego, they through in a high demand location where they can pick up more passengers, making the Las Vegas to San Diego flight more economical in a business sense. When you book the flight you described in your first post, you are committing to each leg of the itinerary, not just to get to a higher demand location for a cheaper price.

Even if you hop off in Vegas and then book a 1 way ticket to San Diego and then your return flights, Southwest can still say that you broke the contract of carriage and it will be true because you have. Like I said in my earlier post, it would be a very rare case for them to come after you for the difference in fares, but at the very least, you will more than likely lose any of your miles you earned on that itinerary. It would also be unlikely that they'd cancel your Rapid Rewards membership also for a first time doing this, but if you were to think that it was a cheaper way to get to Vegas and make a habit out of doing it, they more than likely would cancel your account.

I work for TSA and hear 2-3 stories a week of people trying this and then claiming that the airline screwed them over once the rest of their trip is cancelled. The airline isn't screwing them over, it's them trying to screw the airlines over.

So now I have a question for you. Instead of getting on here and coming up with new scenarios to counter anything we might say, have you called Southwest to see about the possibility of extending your layover? I don't fly Southwest often, but they few times I have, they've been very helpful when making requests. You could be asking all these questions and find out that all you needed to do was ask Southwest and they'd help you out.

 

That should work fine. But only if you do not check bags. Your bags would most probably continue to SD. Sometimes when a passenger no shows, they will pull the bag. Either way, not good.

Is that $231 in SW? Not sure I would do that, unless you wait and buy it after you "miss" the one flight. Otherwise, they KNOW you planned to skip that last leg, vs had to for other reasons.

As to the airline doing anything about it... very slim. People do these hidden city tickets all the time.

 

Slightly different situation. If the OP had a RT ticket and skipped one leg, the remaining legs get cancelled. That is when folks think they have been screwed. When it is the last leg, there is nothing for them to cancel, other than the missing/not flown leg.

 

The only thing different in the OP's scenario as described in the first post of this topic is that he still plans to use the Vegas to San Diego portion of his itinerary, he just wants to do it later. He will still have to intentionally miss the originally scheduled flight out of Vegas and then convince the airline that he somehow missed the flight even though they'll know what time he arrived in Vegas. Once he is a no-show for that leg, the rest of his itinerary will be cancelled. He will get a little time to show up and make a claim such as, "I wasn't feeling well and couldn't get out of the bathroom to make the flight", but if he doesn't do that within a reasonable amount of time, then he will be counted as a no-show. The airlines are onto this type of thing and aren't going to view 12-16 hours later as a reasonable amount of time to show up for a flight that somebody supposedly missed on accident.

The OP needs to make a visit to FlyerTalk and see what they say over there. He doesn't even have to post the question. He can do a search and see the same question asked a thousand different ways and it will always be the same answer.

 

Personally, that's exactly what I would do. They can't cancel the rest of your itinerary, because the LV-SD flight IS the "rest of your itinerary". As others have said, you can't check bags this way, so you'll have to weigh that aspect of the scenario when it comes to assessing how practical this is.

Assuming your plan would be to fly to San Diego on Monday February 22nd, if you look on Southwest's website right now, you can fly any time of day on a non-flexible ticket for $163. That could well make staying in Vegas worthwhile, being nearly a third of what your change fee would be.

There are also several sub-$100 flights from Spirit that day, according to Google Flights - though I've heard that's the Comcast of airlines, so I'm leaving that out as a primary suggestion.

 

Sorry, I actually misread his new question. I thought it said buy a new one way to SD for $231 and then his return flight home on a different ticket as in basically he had everything booked together and was going to basically make another booking from LV to SD and back home.

Also, Spirit is ok IF you know what you're getting into. They are absolutely no frills and if you care about things like picking your own seat or any type of luggage, it will end up being an expensive trip even though the price of the flight itself appears to be super cheap. If you read the complaints about Spirit, you can tell that the vast majority of them are the ones that didn't do any research and were only attracted to Spirit because of the extremely low fares that they list. I wouldn't personally book them for travel anywhere, but just stating that the main reason for bad reviews for them is because most people are too lazy to do any research.