“Throwaway tickets” are a risky theft tactic that could save you money but have consequences

A flight passenger recently revealed in a post on X that he saved hundreds of dollars using a rather “risky” hack.

Mike Bolen, a California-based real estate investor, garnered more than 6.2 million views on his social media page after sharing this “wild” way to buy a plane ticket.

Bolen discovered that instead of booking a nonstop flight to St. Louis for $564, he could buy a plane ticket to Atlanta with a stopover in St. Louis for just $198.

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“Why don’t you just grab a carry-on bag and get off the plane in STL? I’ll do it!” he wrote on X with a photo from the airline’s website.

Bolen tried this hack and “it worked fine, no problems,” he told Fox News Digital.

While this hack may be new to Bolen, who noted that he’s never seen anyone test it before, it turns out the hack has been around for a while.

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There’s often talk of “throwaway” or “point-and-over” ticketing, according to Gary Leff, a Texas-based travel industry expert and author of the blog “View From the Wing,” told Fox News Digital by e-mail.

On Leff’s blog, he noted that people book a flight with a connection that passes through their intended destination, but instead of boarding the second flight, they get off at the layover location.

Non-stop plane tickets generally cost more than a connecting flight, so the intention behind the “throwaway ticket” is to save money on the overall cost of the flight.

“The ethics of disposable tickets have been debated for decades. It comes down to airlines believing that a flight from point A to point B to point C is a fundamentally different product than a flight from point A to point B: you buy one thing and consume another,” Leff wrote.

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“And it flies in the face of the common sense idea that if you buy seats on two flights, it’s up to you to decide what to do with them. All of this is the result of complex pricing that customers means find it confusing and unfair at first,” he added. .

Leff noted that while the cost of flying may be lower than a direct flight, there may be practical risks in trying to attempt this trip.

For example, you may need to check your carry-on bag when boarding. Additionally, airlines can automatically redirect you to a new route based on what they think is the destination printed on the original ticket.

Leff added that airlines can actually cancel your mileage account or even impose a travel ban on the passenger.

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“An airline could close your frequent flyer account or even ban you from traveling with them in the future. This is something to consider from time to time, not something to do every week,” Leff wrote on his blog .

“If you are considering purchasing disposable tickets, at least consider crediting miles to a partner airline’s frequent flyer account, although this may not protect you, but why make it easy for them to track you? ” Leff noted.

This hack has attracted attention in recent years, with some airlines targeting Skiplagged.com, a “airline ticket search engine for cheap flights, displaying ticketed trips to hidden cities”, according to the website.

The airfare site even wrote on its website: “Our flights are so cheap that United took us to court…but we won.” »

Fox News Digital has contacted Skiplagged.com and United Airlines for comment.

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“It’s unclear how widespread this practice has become, since it’s not something airlines disclose,” Leff told Fox News Digital.

“However, since it is rarely necessary to purchase a round-trip ticket to get the best fares, this has become easier than ever to do (since these work best when booking one-way tickets).”

If you look beyond the possible risks of hacking the flight, Leff noted that some might find this hack has two points of view when it comes to the ethics of this procedure.

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Either you “accept” the airline’s “contract of carriage” and break the agreement when you buy the ticket, or the “contract of carriage” does not have much force and, therefore, “the point of airline view contradicts common sense morality,” Leff wrote. on its website.

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“There are practical/consequentialist considerations that may dissuade you from this practice or at least from engaging in it frequently,” he said.