Originally Posted by
ethernal
Yes. This is my point. I was responding to another poster who tried to imply LAX-ICN-SFO was not cabotage. LAX-ICN-LAX is bookable because a round-trip is fine, LAX-ICN-SFO is not bookable because - despite the obvious absurdity of transiting to SFO from LAX via ICN - is considered cabotage by whatever rules KE uses to identify it.
The law is dumb enough as is, but it is doubly dumb given that my scenario and associated itinerary is not cabotage in practice given that it is actually a multi-leg O&D - it is just very short O&D. Of course one can just blame KE's interpretation of it (I doubt the US would ever go after KE for this routing), but my point is that dumb laws have real impacts and that KE at least considers that route as breaking cabotage laws despite the prima facie absurdity of it being such.
Gotcha. Misunderstood where you were coming from in that post. Agree it's ridiculous, however the DOT guidance leaves the issue open ended. Companies like legal certainty.
I will say for awhile I was able to book a LAX-SAT via MEX fare. The error on that was while AM operated both segments, the LAX-MEX flight was DL coded. Also ticket was issued on NON-DL/AM stock. This was right after DL/AM tightened their relationship. The fare rules weren't entered correctly and as long as it didn't ticket on DL/AM stock there was nothing to stop it.