Travel question: Will we be able to miss a leg of our flight itinerary?

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Staying in Melbourne could cost us overall (Getty)

Q We have booked a holiday to Australia in November through an agent. We are going to Dubai for a few days, Brisbane, Hobart and flying out from Launceston to Melbourne for the return flight to the UK. We have now heard from friends in Melbourne who would like us to stay with them for a few days. We asked our travel agent if we could change our return flight by three days and were quoted about £825 to do so. One way we thought we could get around this is to book a flight ourselves from Launceston to Melbourne a few days earlier and cancel our other flight. This is obviously going to be a lot cheaper. Will this affect our return flight home, ie will it be cancelled by the agent? We will only be missing a flight and rebooking another one ourselves. Nothing else will be changed.

Dorothy R

A The agent will not cancel the trip if you don’t take the booked Launceston-Melbourne flight, but the airline may well. The standard rule in international aviation is that if a passenger fails to show up for one leg of an itinerary, all subsequent flights are cancelled.