Is Continental going to punish me for evading their clutches?
They can’t fine you, but, as others have stated, they can refuse to honor the remainder of that ticket. Since that’s not a problem for you in this situation, I wouldn’t worry about it. You should be in the clear for any separately ticketed travel, though. If you do this a lot, you might worry about them canceling your tickets, but one time should not affect you. Similar to this is the way that airlines will discover what you are doing and cancel your tickets if you are structuring multiple tickets to avoid stay requirements or otherwise avoid paying them more money. For example, say I wanted to fly in and out of LAS from EWR on a Friday. This would normally be very expensive. And let’s say that I was going to do so in a few weeks as well. It would be much cheaper to book two round trips with the flights a few weeks apart, like EWR-LAS this Friday to EWR Friday night in a few weeks, and LAS-EWR this Friday night to LAS Friday morning in a few weeks. The airlines will definitely get you
