V-Flyer

I've been pricing up a trip to NYC in early December and notice if I go from Heathrow in UC it's substantially more expensive than booking from Edinburgh to NYC - Virgin make you take Flybe to LHR and then you connect to the same Heathrow flight but at, on some flights, nearly half the cost in Upper for the same flight!

I'm guessing you have to take the Edinburgh to London flight in order for check-in to be processed properly? I am wondering if it's possible to hop off on the return leg once I've arrived at Heathrow and then make my way home. The prices are so much cheaper I'd rather go to Edinburgh from Nottingham and see friend there than pay all that extra money... but wondering if it's possible to miss either or both of the Flybe legs of the trip.

Sorry if this has been asked before - did a search but couldn't see any similar threads

You can't miss the first leg or the whole ticket is cancelled.
You can miss the last leg.
Dick D

Thanks Dick D - that doesn’t seem too much of a hardship given the price

I take it you can get into the Clubhouse once at Heathrow

Yes you can. Just bear in mind you’ll need to use Flight Connections to get from Terminal 2, where FlyBe arrive, to Terminal 3. That can take up to 45 minutes and you’ll have to reclear security when you get off the bus at T3.

Airlines are cracking down on skipping last legs. It is not something you should do on a regular basis.

With AA for example they have a specific term in their conditions of carriage than bans it (it's called hidden city ticketing) and have security routines to try and identify it.

BA have been known to charge travel agents the difference between the fare paid and the fare flown cost when passengers have regularly skipped the last leg.

Airlines are also not obliged to short check your luggage so your bags would likely be tagged through to EDI which means a long wait for you to have them retrieved from the system at LHR. Excuses such as 'I need a change of clothes after a shower in the lounge' or 'I'm meeting a friend at LHR and have a present for them' are likely to be met with a 'put them in your carry on bag then' than a 'sure'.

KLM and AF reserve the right to charge people €275 per bag to retrieve bags at AMS and CDG respectively to try and stop short checking.

Also if something goes wrong with your return VS flight and you are re-routed they will work on your destination being EDI rather than LHR so they could very easily put you on the DL JFK-EDI flight and you'd have little or no grounds to object.


If we want the benefit of these cheaper flights from the regions - and I say this as someone who as done my share of ex DUB / ex-CPH / ex-INV and a soon to be ex-AMS - then we really should be prepared to complete the trips as bought. I have missed one last leg though - due to a mislaid passport - but it is not something I do regularly.

Or simply as in the OPs case price up EDI-LHR-JFK-LHR and complete that trip. The savings may not be as great as starting and ending in EDI but would still be a lot cheaper then LHR-JFK.

For ex-EU’s I simply ensure that there’s a London airport switch on the return. If my long haul flight arrives at LHR then I just have my final sector (to DUB, AMS etc) route from LGW or LCY. That forces a baggage short check. Then of course there are countless reasons why I didn’t make that final flight - eg trains a shambles, M25 at a standstill. Done this countless times on VS & BA and will continue to do so because the savings are vast - just €1400 a few weeks ago for BA CW to LAS return against just short of £3K for the identical flight without the DUB start point. As a couple we typically save over £3k every time we do an ex EU

Hi Tontybear - I completely get why airlines would want to discourage people from skipping the last leg of a journey like this. I'm also very sympathetic to regional airports doing more - I'm very much in favour of that. I'd love to be able to fly to more places from East Midlands airport - it's very, very convenient for me. Equally, I love me a saving and if there's a chance of saving a thousand pounds or so, then just as the airlines need to make savings, so do I. Do Virgin have small print on this (I can't find any)? If there are terms and conditions to be followed then I get that, but if it's a genuine loophole then I can live with it.

Chances are I may well travel with just hand luggage on my next flight so that helps a lot with the whole situation. As does a long enough lay-over at LHR for me to have some decent Clubhouse time on the way out.

I am firmly of the opinion that if the airlines have a problem with it, it’s a problem of their own making.

They set the fares, and if they insist on huge discrepancies between the price of flying from London and flying via London they must live with people who - completely legally - play them at their own game.

All they can really do is refuse to short check luggage (but there are usually ways round that), penalise travel agents who facilitate it (so book direct) and issue veiled threats to close your frequent flyer account or charge you the fare difference (no evidence that they ever have).

If the airlines want to stop this, they could. But they haven’t so they’ll just have to put up with it. I suspect the potential for a Daily Mail headline along the lines of “Airline charged me double to cut short my trip to visit my dying mother” is enough to put them off doing anything.

What is very odd is that BA have stopped the amazing ex INV First Class fares (£1.7k to East Coast) but AmexTravel are still selling it.
I don't mind using AmexTravel , but hesitate to use BA's Price Match in case they catch on to the deal!

I have regularly used the ex-EU fares for other destinations at a much lower cost both on VS and BA. However living in Cork, the best option has been ex-AMS but the timing of flights means that if I want to use the return leg (which I do from time to time to allay suspicion, it really only benefits if the flight in LHR arrives in mid-to-late morning. The early flights mean that I am hanging around for out of the day in either LHR or AMS or both!

The last time I flew to JNB, I flew from Cork. The fare was much cheaper than LHR-JNB but not as cheap as AMS-LHR-JNB return but I really felt I couldn't be faffing around with an extra leg to Amsterdam