Is it illegal to not board an aircraft after you have received a boarding pass.

Is it illegal to not board an aircraft after you have received a boarding pass. I can book Townsville - Brisbane on QF for $260, but the same flight as a leg on a Townsville -Sydney fare is only $200. If I have carry on luggage only am I doing anything illegal by not taking the Brisbane - Sydney leg.

In my experience, there is nothing illegal about a no-show.

However, as I'm not sure about the terms of carriage, there is a chance that if you've purchased a return ticket, and if you're not starting your return journey from SYD as per the ticket, you may not be able to return from BNE to TSV.

I don't believe that it is illegal not to board a flight once you have checked in.

BEWARE: It is common practice for airlines to cancel the rest of your itinerary on the booking if you no-show.

Correct - no-show not a crime, but beware that rest of your ticket may be cancelled. If it one-way only ticket or skipped leg is last one than it is no brainier.

What you're talking about is called Hidden City ticketing.

While it's not illegally, it's frowned upon by airlines who would have been able to accommodate another passenger on your connecting flight. Continually booking these types of flights could give the airline cause to cancel your frequent flyer membership should you include your number on the bookings.

Additionally though not in this instance, if the airline operated a direct flight between Townsville (A) and Sydney (C) as well as its flights through Brisbane (B), should they decide to cancel either your A-B flight or B-C flight they could reaccommodate you on the direct A-C flight without any recourse on helping to get to your intended destination because their commitment is to get you from A to C only.

Love this insight.

It's probably frowned upon because they're caught with their hand in the cookie jar hiking prices opportunistically on less competitive routes!

Just last week I had an itinerary from SYD > BRU > LHR > SYD. I asked to have the Brussells to London leg cancelled and they wanted to slug me $100. Just a travel agent rule. So I opted for the no show and there was no recourse when I arrived at Heathrow a week later.

riley, you're quite lucky the airline didn't cancel the rest of your ticket to Sydney (assuming it was all under the same PNR).

I would treat this as an exception rather than common practise.

The thought crossed my mind but looking at it from reasonable angles such as me missing a flight through reasons out of my control, where it didn't interfere with onwards legs, it shouldn't impact me boarding such flights with seperate airlines of future days.

+1

So in other words the safest option (while still doing it) would be to book one way tickets so they couldnt' cancel the return trip.

It's just crazy its' cheaper to fly to sydney with a stop over in Brisbane rather than just flying to Brisbane.  Wow! 

Definitely crazy. Here's another one. Booking PER-JNB on QF is usually quoted as a PER-SYD-JNB routing, but in this case the cost for flying to SYD and back west again isn't added in - like you'd really want to do that anyway. But the fare is similar to PER-JNB on SAA. Conclusion must be that on any given route the carrier will maximise yield - overpricing or underpricing (with inconvenience included) as needed.  Pax beware.

BTW: In the past I used to buy return fares when they were cheaper than O/W then no-show the return. Never any problem. If that still works on some routes (probably international) why not?

Amazing. I naively thought connections were supplementary options, not a means of funnelling more pax onto schedulled flights.

I don't think there's any problem with a no show. There's no room for recourse if it's not a multi leg itinerary. If airlines allowed for a simple cancellation via the ap, it could quickly turn to a win-win. Passenger isn;t requesting money back and airline now has a spare seat it can utilise. 

It's curious.  In Australia domestic flights with connections are often priced lower than direct - except in peak hours. In New Zealand it's the opposite - the connection flights are often not much less than adding the sector fares together. Good if you want a stopover, bad if you want A-B and the direct is full.  Anything involving a "regional" port is going to cost an arm and a leg anyway - Air NZ has a monopoly outside AKL-WLG-CHC-ZQN  and it shows. 

Oops, forgot DUD - Jetstar goes there too.

Used to be NZ$1800 (A$1400 at the time) AKL>>BNE>>PER>>BNE>>AKL in business with QF whe it was A$2400 return BNE>>PER>>BNE in J class. I used toi always have one ticket "on the go " so I could visit NZ any time I wanted to for less than free (I am based in QLD).