‘Throwaway ticketing’ is risky flight tactic that could save you money but comes with consequences

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

Mike Bolen, a real estate investor based in California, has 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 purchase a flight ticket to Atlanta with a layover in St. Louis for only $198.

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“Why would you not just do a carry-on and get off the plane in STL? I am!” he wrote on X along with a photo of the airline’s website.

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

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

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It is often referred to as “throwaway” or “point beyond” ticketing, according to Gary Leff, a Texas-based travel industry expert and author of the blog “View From the Wing,” told Fox News Digital via email.

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

Nonstop flight tickets usually cost more than a connection flight, so the intent behind the “throwaway ticket” is to save money on the overall cost of the flight.

“The ethics of throwaway ticketing have been debated for decades. It comes down to the airlines believing that a flight from A to B to C is a fundamentally different product than a flight from A to B, you’re buying one thing and consuming another,” Leff wrote.

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“And that’s up against the common-sense notion that if you buy seats on two flights, it’s up to you what to do with them. It’s all the result of complicated pricing that average customers find confusing and unfair to begin with,” he added.

Leff noted that while the cost of the flight may be less than a direct flight, there can be practical risks when trying to attempt this travel hack.

For example, you may have to check your carry-on bag when boarding. Also, airlines could automatically reroute you on a new route based on what the airline thinks is the destination printed on the original ticket.

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

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“An airline could shut down your frequent flyer account or even ban you from flying [with] them in the future. It’s something to consider occasionally, not something to do every week,” Leff wrote on his blog.

“If you’re going to do throwaway ticketing, consider at least crediting miles to a partner airline frequent flyer account, though that may not protect you, but why make it easy for them to track you?” Leff noted.

This hack has garnered attention over recent years, with some airlines going after Skiplagged.com, an “airfare search engine for cheap flights, showing hidden-city ticketing trips,” according to the website.

The airfare site even wrote on its website, “Our flights are so cheap, United sued us… but we won.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Skiplagged.com and United Airlines for comment.

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“It’s unclear how much more the practice has taken hold, since that’s not something airlines disclose,” Leff told Fox News Digital.

“However, since it rarely requires buying a roundtrip ticket in order to get the best fares anymore, it’s become easier to do than ever (since these work best when booking one-way tickets).”

If you look past the possible risks involved with the flight hack, Leff did note that some may find this hack has two points of view when it comes to the ethics of this procedure.

Either you “agree” to the airline’s “Contract of Carriage” and you break the agreement when you buy the ticket, or the “Contract of Carriage” does not carry much force and, therefore, “airline view contradicts commonsense morality,” Leff wrote on his website.

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