Over the weekend I attended Frequent Traveler University, and along with Gary hosted two “Advanced Q&A” sessions. We took questions both “live” and from a list of questions people had submitted beforehand. We didn’t get through all of them, so I figured I’d answer a few of the ones submitted beforehand here.
Here’s one of the questions:
Since your ID is only checked at the TSA checkpoint, what’s to stop me from having someone else do a one-way mileage run for me by flying under themselves for the first segment and then fly the rest of the segments as me once they’re past security?
Can you try to fly on a ticket in someone else’s name?
So I’m not sure if I’m understanding the above correctly, but you can certainly try to make it even easier than that. Just book the other person a refundable ticket to get through security, cancel it, and then they can board as you. That being said, I don’t think you should try this.
What are the risks of flying on someone else’s ticket?
Here are the potential downsides to flying on a ticket in someone else’s name:
- It’s a violation of the contract of carriage for every airline, so in the event you get caught you’ll be in trouble.
- Sometimes the TSA does ID checks at the gate, so if they do that on one of these flights you’re hosed.
- In the event of irregular operations, if you get rebooked and your ticket is reissued, in many cases you’ll need to present ID to get your new boarding passes. That could get tricky if someone else is flying under your name.
- Is it really an efficient mileage run if they’re just flying as you one-way, and then they have to fly back on their own ticket?
So it’s possible, it certainly could work, but it’s also very risky and not something I’d recommend doing.
I’m curious, has anyone ever tried this, and if so, how did it go?
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