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It may be more risky to try this with splitting your flights into individually booked segments. Say, for example, I book a flight from ZRH to PRG with a stopov

It may be more risky to try this with splitting your flights into individually booked segments. Say, for example, I book a flight from ZRH to PRG with a stopover in VIE (which is usually cheaper than the ZRH VIE segement alone and backs the assertion of the paper up nicely, but I digress). The legal connection minimum time in VIE is 30 minutes and Austrian Airlines will happily sell me a ticket with 35 minutes time to connect. If the ZRH VIE flight is delayed and I miss my connection it's their responsibilty to resolve the issue. Potentially putting me up into a hotel overnight and even compensating me for a delayed arrival. EU rules are pretty strict here. If I book the segments seperately it's my responsibilty and if I miss the connection due to delays I'm shit out of luck and the airline has no obligation or responsibility towards me. I realize that the UK train network is very different than the scenario described and I appreciate that big savings can be made by planning ahead. I just don't think that this necessarily applies for flight ticketing. Note that I'm not argueing that big savings can't be made by hidden city - or nested booking strategies. But those come with another bundle of potential problems.

gil 11y ago
Yes, that is indeed a downside, plus if you have hold luggage you have to consider the extra time to get it out of the first plane and checking it in to the second one which might well not be possible if the transfer time is as little as 30 minutes. But assuming you have margin for that and since we are comparing the two same flights, we can assume that our loss is also the airliner loss, hence they will make everything they can to make the transfer work for the people that bought a single fare. Therefore I see the difference in price as insurance against something that the airliner themselves have an incentive to avoid. Additionally to the risk, as with any insurance, I also consider the cost of the worst case scenario. Most of the time my decision is not to pay the "insurance", unless time is critical and missing the connection means more than hotel + extra flight.

gil 11y ago

Yes, that is indeed a downside, plus if you have hold luggage you have to consider the extra time to get it out of the first plane and checking it in to the second one which might well not be possible if the transfer time is as little as 30 minutes. But assuming you have margin for that and since we are comparing the two same flights, we can assume that our loss is also the airliner loss, hence they will make everything they can to make the transfer work for the people that bought a single fare. Therefore I see the difference in price as insurance against something that the airliner themselves have an incentive to avoid. Additionally to the risk, as with any insurance, I also consider the cost of the worst case scenario. Most of the time my decision is not to pay the "insurance", unless time is critical and missing the connection means more than hotel + extra flight.