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I want to go from Santiago, Chile to Denver. I can save LOTS of money by buying a LATAM ticket Santiago-MEX-Guadalajara and throw away the MEX-Guadalajara portion. It seems like there's little to no risk since the second leg is not LATAM and I'll have to claim my checked luggage for immigration in MEX anyway. I'm not a LATAM frequent flyer.

I'll get an American, United or Southwest ticket from MEX to DEN. Can anyone see a problem with my plan?

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    Do you have to go back to Santiago when you're done? If this is a one-way then you can pull it off. If you need the return portion of the ticket to get from MEX back to SCL then it's a no-go. – cbw Feb 28 '18 at 21:09
  • Always assume that the airline will block your ticket as soon as you depart in Mexico. So the best way is to use two different airlines for forward and back ticket if you can pull it off. – Thorsten S. Feb 28 '18 at 23:42
  • I'll probably never have occasion to fly LATAM again, so not worried about them. But, I'm operating on the assumption that ALL incoming passengers claim bags for inspection in MEX when arriving from another country, and not automatically sent to Interjet for the flight to Guadalajara. Can anyone confirm? – Gary S. Mar 1 '18 at 22:24
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If you book a return ticket, your return trip will be cancelled as soon as you miss the MEX-GDL segment of your flight.

If there are irregular operations on the day of your trip, you may be rerouted on a different route. Your ticket is from Santiago to Guadalajara, not to Mexico City, so if LATAM couldn't route you through Mexico City for some reason, they might find some other creative routing for you. I think that's fairly unlikely since I doubt LATAM flies between any other Mexican airport and Santiago (and you could research this), but it has to be kept in mind.

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  • Being in this situation (interrupted flight with rerouting) many times this year alone I have to add that situation is not that bad in practice. Automatic rerouting (when happened) always preserved all my connections, and when rerouting with gate agent/customer service they offer you options to choose. – George Y. Jun 28 '18 at 21:51
  • @GeorgeY. You might need to be a bit lucky for that to happen. Twice I've had rerouted connections (neither when I was doing hidden-city ticketing, thankfully) - once YQM-YUL-YWG-YQR became YQM-YYZ-YQR (and I really wanted that extra segment to bump up my status), and TPA-IAD-YYZ became TPA-DEN-YYZ. So... it can absolutely happen. (Two different airlines, obviously.) – Jim MacKenzie Jun 29 '18 at 0:16
  • Did the change happen automatically, without giving you an option to alter it? – George Y. Jun 29 '18 at 14:35
  • @GeorgeY. The one at YQM happened because the YQM-YUL flight was cancelled and I was advised that was the only way they could get me home that day. No idea what they'd have done if I said I couldn't get home that day (of course I could :) ). The TPA-IAD-YYZ was rerouted due to Hurricane Sandy. I had choice of how I rerouted, but IAD, DCA and BWI were not options due to the weather. So really, in both cases, I had no choice but to abandon my connection plan and to route through other airports. – Jim MacKenzie Jun 29 '18 at 14:51
  • That's what I said - you still got a choice, they did not force you to take a specific itinerary. Of course it is possible that you can't make it this day to the hidden city. – George Y. Jun 29 '18 at 23:31

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