Expert: Roberto Gomes - 7/25/2007

Question
I am traveling in Europe in September--going from US to Italy for two weeks, flying from Florence to Paris for one week, and then flying from Paris back to the US.  I have three separate round trip tickets and plan on "dumping" the return for each one. Will I get in any trouble doing this, with the airlines or passport issues?  And if not, should I cancel each return flight (after the first legs are done) or just not show up?

Answer
Dear Janet,

First of all, you'll need to check if all your reservations and tickets are linked with each other. If this is the case, you may face a problem when showing up to check-in and find out that you reservation was cancelled due to no-show in the previous leg.

You mentioned that you are holding 3 separated round-trip tickets, when in fact you should have one one-way ticket from US to Florence, another one-way from Florence to Paris and a third one-way ticket from Paris to the US that makes one round-trip ticket from and to the US.

So if you plan to skip one leg, lets say for example, Florence-Paris, you'll need to call your airline and inform them that you are planning to arrive by others means in Paris and ask them to hold your Paris-US reservation. Also you may face a penalty since you are "breaking" a rule of your transportation agreement with the airline.

Hope this helped. If you need additional information please let me know.
Best Regards,
R. Gomes