[jimworcs]

This ridiculous policy is well established within the industry. It is entirely to defend their ridiculous pricing policy and is particularly rife in airlines which operate the "hub" system. Hubs are in effect local monopolies. In order for the economics of a hub to work, they rely on feeding passengers into and out of the hub. In order to faciliatate this, they have to route people via hubs, but the fare they can charge to be competitive is less than it would cost to fly from the hub directly. To protect this gouging, they make it a condition that all the segments of a flight are taken.

It is not true every airline does this. Many low cost point to point airlines do not have this policy.

The solution. Proper regulation of the airline industry. The local monopoly hubs should be broken up, in the same way as ATT were broken up in the 70s. No airline should have more than 25% of the take off and landing slots at any airport. This would break up the hub system, encourage more competition and increase the number of point to point flights. The airlines will throw up a whole host of disaster scenarios as to why this won't work. They are bogus, just as AT&T disaster arguments to protect Ma Bell were bogus. These giant hubs are anti-competitive and against the consumer interests, as are these mammoth "too big to fail" airlines that are given anti-trust immunity to merge.

SOONER OR LATER, WE NEED TO WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE. The airline industry is abusive to customers and badly needs an overhaul and re-regulation.