Flying back to Canada with Air Canada or Air Transat one-way

[HTS_QC]

I currently live in Europe and will be moving to Canada soon. I have looked at one-way flights from the Air Canada / Air Transat websites and they are very expensive. When I look at return flights on the same outbound date they are much cheaper than the one-way flights. Can I buy a return flight and only use the outbound flight or is it not allowed? I don't want to be blacklisted by the airline or end up being charged the one-way fee.

I have also read the following: ''If an airline catches you out and wants to take action, their resulting penalty can range from charging you the difference in fare, confiscating your ticket on check-in at the airport, issuing a warning letter, or even barring you from traveling with them again.''

 

[scylla]

I currently live in Europe and will be moving to Canada soon. I have looked at one-way flights from the Air Canada / Air Transat websites and they are very expensive. When I look at return flights on the same outbound date they are much cheaper than the one-way flights. Can I buy a return flight and only use the outbound flight or is it not allowed? I don't want to be blacklisted by the airline or end up being charged the one-way fee.

I have also read the following: ''If an airline catches you out and wants to take action, their resulting penalty can range from charging you the difference in fare, confiscating your ticket on check-in at the airport, issuing a warning letter, or even barring you from traveling with them again.''

I think you already know the answer to your question. If you buy a return but don't use the second part of the flight, then there's some risk (although likely very low) the airline will take some sort of action against you. There's no way to completely avoid this risk.

So if you want to play it 100% risk free, buy a one way flight. If you're OK with some level of risk, then go with the return.

 

[Canada2020eh]

I currently live in Europe and will be moving to Canada soon. I have looked at one-way flights from the Air Canada / Air Transat websites and they are very expensive. When I look at return flights on the same outbound date they are much cheaper than the one-way flights. Can I buy a return flight and only use the outbound flight or is it not allowed? I don't want to be blacklisted by the airline or end up being charged the one-way fee.

I have also read the following: ''If an airline catches you out and wants to take action, their resulting penalty can range from charging you the difference in fare, confiscating your ticket on check-in at the airport, issuing a warning letter, or even barring you from traveling with them again.''

I've never heard of an airline taking action on a person, banning or chasing them for money for not using the return portion of their ticket, certainly not worth their while for the couple hundred $$ they might possibly get back. I've done it numerous times for various reasons. Your 2nd paragraph doesn't sound like it came from an airline website.

 

[scylla]

I've never heard of an airline taking action on a person, banning or chasing them for money for not using the return portion of their ticket, certainly not worth their while for the couple hundred $$ they might possibly get back. I've done it numerous times for various reasons. Your 2nd paragraph doesn't sound like it came from an airline website.

Airlines all have this built into their policies. You have to search for the wording, but it's there (at least for major airlines). I know three people that have been penalized (3 people that I can remember right now). I'm pretty sure two people were given the choice of either paying the additional fare or facing a suspension on that airline - and they paid the $. I can't remember the details of the third person. I think statistically this doesn't happen often, but it does happen. I'm pretty sure two of these friends were repeate offenders. And I think one of them did it on a very expensive flight.

 

[Canada2020eh]

Airlines all have this built into their policies. You have to search for the wording, but it's there (at least for major airlines). I know three people that have been penalized (3 people that I can remember right now). I'm pretty sure two people were given the choice of either paying the additional fare or facing a suspension on that airline - and they paid the $. I can't remember the details of the third person. I think statistically this doesn't happen often, but it does happen. I'm pretty sure two of these friends were repeate offenders. And I think one of them did it on a very expensive flight.

Not that it really means anything but I am in that industry which is why I commented. Bottom line I guess is as you said before, depends if you want to take some risk or not.

 

[scylla]

Not that it really means anything but I am in that industry which is why I commented. Bottom line I guess is as you said before, depends if you want to take some risk or not.

Ah - interesting. What do the policies say from your perspective?

I'm going to see if I can get more info from one of my friends. I may be remembering some of the facts not quite correctly. The other two are more like acquaintances so not going to bug them. Pretty sure the close friend had an issue with KLM and that's the airline that gave him crap.

For the records, my friends probably aren't a good sample for this. It's a large group that travels very frequently and extensively. Pretty much anything that can happen related to travel has happened to at least one of them.

 

[scylla]

Not that it really means anything but I am in that industry which is why I commented. Bottom line I guess is as you said before, depends if you want to take some risk or not.

Update - friend got a warning. Something along the lines of "it has come to our attention" and facing restrictions on future flight bookings or something like that. So no action taken. Just a warning and told to stop.

 

[Canada2020eh]

Update - friend got a warning. Something along the lines of "it has come to our attention" and facing restrictions on future flight bookings or something like that. So no action taken. Just a warning and told to stop.

I'm based in Canada and as far as I know our company doesn't have a policy regarding it, doesn't mean one doesn't exist though. Possibly other countries have policies where airlines enforce it. IMO most airlines would be happy that a person doesn't show for their flight, most airlines oversell flights with the expectation that a % of passengers will not be there for 1 reason or another. So if they lose a couple hundred in revenue from the no show as opposed to having to shell out many hundreds to the other person in compensation who didn't get on the flight because it was oversold then they are happy.

Traveling is quite frequently an adventure as you allude to, hopefully not a negative one though!!

 

[scylla]

I'm based in Canada and as far as I know our company doesn't have a policy regarding it, doesn't mean one doesn't exist though. Possibly other countries have policies where airlines enforce it. IMO most airlines would be happy that a person doesn't show for their flight, most airlines oversell flights with the expectation that a % of passengers will not be there for 1 reason or another. So if they lose a couple hundred in revenue from the no show as opposed to having to shell out many hundreds to the other person in compensation who didn't get on the flight because it was oversold then they are happy.

Traveling is quite frequently an adventure as you allude to, hopefully not a negative one though!!

Traveling is always a positive experience for me, even when the unexpected happens. You have to be prepared for the unexpected (and the possibility of delays) - and also not be an *sshole to airline employees.

 

[Canada2020eh]

Traveling is always a positive experience for me, even when the unexpected happens. You have to be prepared for the unexpected (and the possibility of delays) - and also not be an *sshole to airline employees.

Glad to hear that but as we all know not everybody does. A lot of people want to vent when things don't go as planned but people should realize that the front line employees who have to deal with the customer when there are problems don't have the answers to their questions of why it has happened, all they can do is try to accommodate them on other flights. As the saying goes you will further using honey than vinegar, or something like that. Customer Service Agents must have thick skins, glad that's not my job.

Go with the flow is the best thing to do. They aren't intentionally trying to screw you.