Save £££ on your airfare with rail / bus hidden-city ticketing

You might have heard of “hidden-city ticketing”, a trick to purchase cheaper air tickets by adding one or more segments to your desired itinerary. For example, Flying New York – London – Paris could be cheaper than New York – London due to its indirect nature, so in this case it saves money to book the first route and drop the second leg if you only intend to travel to London.

There are complications of course, which I will discuss later in this article. There is an advanced and safer approach though which is less-known, that takes advantage of the interlining agreement between airlines and rail / bus companies.

Actually I’ve been aware of it since a long time ago. I was studying in Switzerland and my Mum was coming to visit me. When looking for an air ticket Swiss’s website offered the following route: PEK-ZRH on Swiss, and then Zurich-Basel on a SBB train. It’s cheaper than flying to Zurich only!

Similar arrangements can be found on Lufthansa’s website between them and DB:

Apparently it’s not necessarily cheaper so you need to do your research.

Most practically, the trick works best if you are looking for a one-way flight to the UAE. A direct flight from London to Abu Dhabi on Etihad costs around £500:

Whereas adding a leg to Dubai reduces the price by more than half!

The trip from Abu Dhabi airport to Dubai is undertaken by a coach. If Dubai is your final destination, you could take the coach or make your own travel arrangement; otherwise just leave the airport and enjoy Abu Dhabi!

Traditionally there are two complications with hidden-city, but they are very unlikely to hinder the novel approach:

  • Luggage check-through to the final destination – your luggage won’t check through onto the train or bus so you’ll have to collect them yourself anyway
  • Airline blacklisting you for the behaviour – contrary to a flight, it’s technically very difficult for the airline to know if you’ve taken the train / bus journey or not, which prevents them from taking any actions against you

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