Punki, although there are various ways that sets of roundtrip tickets become back-to-back from the airline's point of view; I will use your ticketing example, flying all segments exactly as booked, and will try my best to illustrate the back-to-back transformation.

Using your example, each roundtrip ticket, in and of itself, would create no problem when flown as booked if no other tickets were involved. For a passenger to be violating the airline's back-to-back rules, at least an additional ticket must be booked, as in your example. The airlines feel it is within their purview and their prerogative to look beyond just a single roundtrip ticket and play judge and jury to your intent. If the airline feels you are flying, using two or more roundtrip tickets to avoid any of their tariff rules, (Saturday night stay, for example) they consider that back-to-back ticketing. In other words, they do not treat each roundtrip ticket by itself. They make a combined assessment of all your tickets and reach their conclusions.

By applying their back-to-back interpretation on our ticket purchases, they have, in your words, "come up with a way to limit the time between separate roundtrips." I only wish I had the resources to fight them on this and a few other ticketing rules. A class action lawsuit, perhaps??? Just my perspective!

[This message has been edited by MRLIMO (edited 10-11-1999).]