Missing the First Leg
What Happens If You Miss the First Leg of Your Flight??
This came up on my recent birthday trip to Costa Rica and is a useful example of how airline ticketing rules actually work.
Our itinerary started with a short flight from Kalamazoo (AZO) to Detroit (DTW), followed by an international leg. The airline automatically texted us when our first flight was delayed due to mechanical issues, and it became clear we would miss our connection in Detroit.
If you simply do not show up for a flight, the airline will typically cancel the rest of your itinerary. Not just that segment. Everything that follows. That is the default rule.
Instead of waiting and becoming a no-show, we called the airline while the delay was happening.
Now here’s where it got interesting. The airline rep offered to rebook us. If they rebooked, it would be at today’s rate, which is obviously insane. I enthusiastically refused rebooking. I said I wanted to preserve the first leg of the ticket because the text saying it was a mechanical problem meant I had a chance at a refund, which I could pursue once the immediate issue was solved. They adjusted the ticket so we could start in Detroit and still take the international flight.
The return created a different problem. Our ticketed final destination was AZO, but we needed to get off in Detroit to retrieve our car. That part is allowed. You can end your trip early and leave the airport at a connection point without getting permission.
Checked luggage follows a different set of rules. Bags are tagged to the final destination on the ticket, and airlines do not routinely pull them mid-route. Trust, I called the airline, I asked at every single gate, but there was no way to change it. Our large checked bags continued on to Kalamazoo while we got off in Detroit. We then had to drive to AZO to pick them up. Fortunately AZO is like 30 minutes from my house.
Because of the issues with retrieving our luggage, it was now virtually impossible to use the final leg of our ticketed journey. This is still a loss due to the first plane’s mechanical failure, and therefore refundable.
In the end, the first leg was refunded. The last leg was refunded. And I got a heap of SkyMiles to boot.
The takeaways are straightforward. If you are going to miss the first leg, contact the airline before departure so the rest of your itinerary can be preserved. If you plan to exit early on the return, assume your checked luggage will continue to the ticketed destination and plan accordingly. (If AZO wasn’t so close to my house, I would have considered shipping my luggage home instead.) And finally, don’t rebook if there’s any possibility of refund!!
After all that, my trip was amazing and I loved San Jose.
