Stopping at an airport different from destination

Question

I have a Canadian Visa and an air ticket to Toronto via Montreal. However, I would like to stop at Montréal instead of going to Toronto. While I asked my travel agent to cancel this booking, he refused to do so saying it would cost me more. Instead, he asked me to check in only upto Montreal.

Is this possible?

Update: Finally, it turned out to be not as scary as made out in the present answer: When I checked in at Chennai, I asked them to check my luggages only upto Montréal. And, I cleared customs at Montréal and collected my luggage and just walked out...

Answer 1

Assuming you have no further flights on the same ticket (like the return) you can get off anywhere you want. The airline will cancel all future flights on that ticket.

Your checked suitcase will probably end up on a Toronto baggage carousel, going round and round and eventually feeling quite rejected. It will eventually get picked up by airport security for loitering and then spend several days being passed from one handling service to another, with some unpleasant security searches in between. This could lead to long-term trust issues and require a lot of suitcase therapy.

( If you clear customs in Montreal you will have your bags and can just walk out. )

Answer 2

Recall that my itinerary is: MAA -- FRA -- YUL -- YYZ and that I would like to break my journey at YUL.

Here is the only relevant detail I figured out subsequently:

• Irrespective of my final destination, I will have to clear customs and go through immigration checks at the point of entry as far as Canada is concerned. In particular, being a student, I should collect my student permit at Montréal.

Here's a summary of what happened:

I requested the Lufthansa airlines staff to check my luggages only upto YUL telling them that I will not fly the YUL -- YYZ flight. They sought to know why I did not want to fly. Upon explaining my rationale (that I really wanted to get to Kingston, ON and I would take a train from Dorval, Montréal to Kingston, ON), they checked my luggage only upto YUL.

Lufthansa issues boarding pass only for the MAA -- FRA at Chennai. I had to collect the boarding passes for the other flights operated by Air Canada at their counter at Frankfurt from the appropriate gate.

At Frankfurt, the Air Canada staff issued my boarding pass for both the flights and they did not care about my telling them that I would not fly the last flight on the itinerary.

Now I do not what my status was as far as the last flight is concern, but as I have described, it was hassle-free to not fly the last flight in my case...