Beware of “no show”.

Beware of “no show”.

Just a warning for everyone – beware of “no show”, your ticket may be cancelled. I booked flight BKK-HEL-LED-HEL-BKK by Finnair. For HEL-LED leg I have to wait about 22 hours, so instead I decided take a train, so I can be in St Petersburg the same day and hug my relatives instead of sleeping in hotel in Helsinki. In Bangkok I have explained the situation at check-in counter and asked to check my baggage only to Helsinki. Few days after arrival, knowing that it still could be a problem I have a look at my booking in Internet and found that my whole return leg disappears! There was no word about canceling and I never received any e-mail about cancellation (they send me them in dozens when they want $40 from me!!!) – booking just disappears. I called Finnair customer service and after 15 min of talking and few calls they managed to restore my tickets for free as “an exemption”. Their explanation was that ticket was cancelled because of “no show”. WTF??? I did show up in BKK and I did explain check-in person that I will not board HEL-LED plane!

So if you ever decide to do something like I did, make sure that you deliver message to numskulls that you not going to board certain leg.

This is almost always the case with tickets.

Am sure if you read the fare rules it is there somewhere.

Fine, but I did say to check-in person that I am not going to board next flight. He never says anything back to me, no warning, nothing. And he did check my baggage to HEL only and never issued me boarding pass on “missed” leg. What else could I do?

And also why we need this f####g Internet if they never says anything on my booking and never send me any “confirmation of cancellation” email? What would happens if I would be not so paranoid and discover my problem at check-in 2 weeks later?

This is generally common knowledge among experienced flyers. If you skip a segment, the rest of the ticket is deemed a "no show" and is cancelled.

The ground team in Bangkok are not Finnair staff, but are a local aviation logistics company who hold the contract with Finnair. If you do this in future, I'd suggest calling the airline before you fly to rebook the ticket without the segment you want to skip. Failing that, talk to the ticketing desk at the airline's home airport which in this case is Helsinki.

airlines really do not like pax skipping out on legs of their ticket (qantas makes it very clear in terms and conditions)

it comes down to people ditching legs because it's cheaper to fly onwards (but not actually fly onwards) and find another means (train/bus/ferry etc) to catch up with the itinerary elsewhere.

In fact BKK-HEL-LED-HEL-BKK is cheaper than BKK-HEL-BKK – do not ask me why. So for some smartass it makes perfect sense to buy “LED” ticket and never use HEL-LED-HEL part. In my case I actually paid more because of HEL-LED train ticked – I was trying to save time and if it would be conventional connection I will use it for sure.

Serg,

What you have described is classic airline pricing structure.

The BKK ground staff really should not check your bags to HEL only since your final destination is LED. The fact that they did it tells me they're clueless and clueless about the remifications.

One reason why the BKK/HEL/LED flight is cheaper than the BKK/HEL flight is precisely because this routing is less convenient, resulting in less demand. Ergo cheaper fares.

Not sure why you are surprised as everyone else here has mentioned is standard part of ticketing as long as I can remember

If you are not going to fly on a leg of your booking, you need to formally cancel that leg, which depending on the fare and conditions may trigger a recalculation which may mean you need to pay them more money. Variations between Origin/Destination fares dont always make sense to the passenger. The shorter series of legs may be dearer than the longer series, as the carrier seeks to generate more traffic to/from a specific market, or has stronger competition to/from that market.

I was thinking that there might be a couple of sneaky sneaky ways around this in future. I will try and explain it as best as I can.

So in this case the price to LED was much cheaper than just HEL return. Many airlines will offer a free or $100 stopover in each direction so if you see that 22 hour transit in HEL, try running a search that will give you a 4 day outbound stopover instead. It may be the same price or just slightly higher as you will now be paying a small departure tax from HEL.

Even though you're on a train as soon as you land in Finland, you now have 4 days to contact the airline to rebook your flights.

Since you have now already departed you are bound by the original fare conditions and we will say that rebooking is permitted for a small fee. They may be able to cancel the unwanted sector for just the small fee as LED is still your point of turn around.

A couple of impotant points to remember,

1. Changing a flight after your journey has commenced (providing you haven't "no-showed" on a sector) is almost always easier than prior to departure as the fare doesn't need to be reassessed. It usually only needs to be booked within the same fare bucket/validity/flight numbers etc, which are already in your reservation.
2. Airlines almost always consider there to be a huge difference between stopovers and transits so booking them at the start makes things easier and gives flexibility. Also use the correct terminology to save confusion.
3. Assume nothing! When it comes to booking flights everything is always different so when you speak with people get things in writing, names and times of conversation.

When I was a travel agent I have had people trying to change details of their itineraries 3 days prior to their first departure which would have cost thousands due to the whole fare needing to be reassessed. So what I did was waited until they had arrived at their first destination, then they would email me that they had arrived safe and I could now alter the details of their later sectors. The only payments that needed to be made was the small airline fee. No reassessment of the fare.

I imagine that the trouble stared as the people in BKK were changing your ticket prior to any travel commencing plus the "no show". All fare conditions are different so it is important to check before booking however the example above has been successfully done in the past. 

OK, I hope I wasn't too confusing but if anyone wants me to explain anything of has a question please feel free to ask.

:-)