Comment Re:'Hidden city' explanation (Score 1) 126
Only if you don't count the $250 they already got for the ticket you bought. Their complaint (on that issue) is that you're buying a cheaper ticket than they wanted to sell you. Everything else is smoke and mirrors, which amount to "we want to sell the same seat twice, and we can't when you do this, and we don't like it even though we couldn't if you bought the ticket we wanted to sell you."
I'm not sure that makes sense, from the airline's perspective.
If you bought a ticket NY-LA, you essentially bought two seats; NY-Chicago and Chicago-LA.
If you bail in Chicago, then their desire to have been able to sell the Chicago-LA seat doesn't mean they wanted to sell the seat twice - they would just rather have sold the NY-Chicago and the Chicago-LA seats on separate tickets, for a higher price on both seats.
And yes, there's all sorts of collateral issues - both positive and negative. I'm sure the same applies when I buy a roundtrip ticket from B to A and back to B when I just want to go from A to B, because the roundtrip ends up being much cheaper than the one-way (intercontinental flight, early 2000's - no idea if it's still the case as I haven't been in a situation lately where that would present itself as a necessity)