Another benefit of throwaway ticketing

Introduction

If you don’t know what throwaway ticketing is, you can read this Business Insider article.  Most people do this to save on ticket costs.  There’s even a site to help you do it called Skiplagged.  The gist is – if you wanted to book Seattle to Houston, that may be expensive, but if you book Seattle to Austin that connects in Houston, that may save you $100.  Then when you land in Houston, you don’t fly the last segment.  Of course this only works when you don’t have checked bags.

The additional benefit

The other benefit of throwaway ticketing which just happened to me, was that if there is a schedule change on the throwaway leg, you should be able to cancel your entire ticket for free.  I had booked a paid flight recently (don’t want to get into too many details in case the Cardinals are watching) that involved an additional leg at the end of the trip to save some money.  Later I found out I could no longer take the trip and was HOPING for ANY schedule change so I could cancel without paying the enormous cancellation fee.  As it turns out, last week, the throwaway leg had a schedule change that made me arrive 1:30 hrs later than originally planned, and I was able to cancel the entire ticket for free.

Conclusion

I don’t normally book paid flights, but in the future, if I can add a leg to the end for say an additional $20, then I think I’ll do it just to increase my chance of a schedule change and thus a free cancellation.  This would also apply to award tickets, but award tickets are cheaper and easier to cancel.