Hidden City Ticketing on an International flight

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It's a little unclear, but as I understand it, you're proposing (the cities are made-up examples):

  • Booking a round-trip ticket using miles with Airline A
  • Where you're booked to fly NY-Paris-Moscow on Airline B
  • And a return Moscow-Paris-NY on Airline C
  • But you plan to not show up for the Paris-Moscow leg on Airline B

With such a plan, the remainder of your ticket will be cancelled once you miss the Paris-Moscow flight. While it's conceivable that you could slip through the cracks between different airlines' IT systems, your reservation is linked together on one ticket, and I don't believe it's likely that you'd get away with anything.

Other issues:

  • Any checked baggage would be unavailable to you in Paris, as it should be checked through to Moscow.
  • You would still need to get yourself to Moscow to travel home.
  • You would need a Russian visa with sufficient validity both to allow you to board the flight in NY and to actually get to Moscow to fly home (less of a problem, as 3-year multiple entry visas are common).
  • If the Paris authorities questioned you when entering France, they could have concerns about your itinerary. While they aren't there to enforce airline rules, your unusual travel plans would be more difficult to explain.

Also, many, but not all certainly, airlines will charge the same number of miles for any roundtrip flight between the US and Europe, making this scheme pointless. We don't know the rules of your program though.

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