Travel question: Can I use just the return flight on my booking?

Q I have return flights booked from Leeds to Rome via Amsterdam with KLM. My travel plans have changed. Can l change my booking so as to use just the return flight?

Julie H

A I am very glad you asked, because if you fail to arrive for the first leg of a multi-stop journey your entire booking will be cancelled.

I can see that this sounds extremely unfair: from your perspective, you have bought the right to a seat on the flights from Leeds-Bradford to Amsterdam and onwards to Rome, plus the return legs. But the airlines see it differently. They believe the product you bought is a single entity, and if you want to change any element of it then you must pay whatever sum you agreed to when you first booked. Typically this will be an amendment fee so high that you might as well throw away the booking and start again.

They impose this seemingly draconian rule because of the prevalence of “tariff abuse”. It might well be that a Leeds-Amsterdam-Rome ticket costs less than an Amsterdam-Rome segment on its own. That is rational because the Dutch airline must cut its fare from the north of England to compete against the nonstop flights of Jet2 and Ryanair from Manchester to the Italian capital.

Conversely, KLM can command a premium on nonstop Amsterdam-Rome flights compared with, say Lufthansa via Frankfurt.

So without the rule, I could book a flight from Leeds but only board the flight at Amsterdam, saving me cash but annoying the airline. That is why the rule exists.

Having said that, it is worth calling the airline and seeing if it will offer any flexibility. In my experience, some of them do (eg Qantas and United) while others do not (British Airways).

For future bookings, if there is no significant difference in price for two one-ways compared with a return, then buy separate legs.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder