“Skiplagging” — or booking a flight with a layover to skip the last leg of travel — is a common hack for travelers who don’t want to pay for a direct flight or who to save money on airfare to a connecting destination. Airlines contend the practice results in lost revenue for seats on planes.
You simply cannot have checked bags. If you’re traveling for less than a week and don’t need large liquids, this is usually pretty easy to do. You can have a wheely carry-on and a backpack as your personal item, which gives you a ton of storage. I don’t need checked bags for the vast majority of travel I do and prefer to avoid it by all means possible, as it just slows me down and has the potential for the airline to lose my bag.
What about your return trip? How does that work
You need tickets orginating from the airport you want to leave from. You wouldnt buy a round trip to another location.
So you can’t do a round trip?
Two one-ways. Your origin would have to be the city you want to fly from, as missing an earlier flight generally means your ticket gets cancelled.
This can be a little difficult flying from, for example, Denver to Albuquerque. There probably won’t be many cheaper flights if you add Albuquerque to Los Angeles or Houston or something, but Albuquerque to Denver may be cheaper if you had a connection to Las Vegas or something.