Hi, me again

So I'm still pretty much a n00b at this travelling thing (this past june, before I discovered Flyertalk, I still thought that if you miss a connection for whatever reason, you were SOL and you had to pay for a new ticket, and I would always book overnight stopovers or 12+ hours connections ''just to be sure''...that's how big a noob I am) and I'm finally getting how the airlines work and all that. But in my defense, I distinctively remember 2 trips of my younger years, one to MCO where the flight home was delayed by 18 hours and one to POP that was delayed 40 hours and AC and TS gave us no hotels, no food, no voucher, no nothing but the right to sleep on the airport floor for all that time :/

So, on my upcoming trip to vegas, I'm flying LGA-YUL-LAS-YUL-LGA (which, of course is ~220$ cheaper than YUL-LAS non stop return ), and since I can only get my yearly 2 weeks of vacation on what we call ''Construction vacation'' around here (last 2 weeks of july, when half the province is on vacation) and so , of course yet again, AC just jumps on the occasion and triples airfares to anywhere out of YUL...

Now, I'm looking at fares to random destinations for these dates and LGA-YUL-Anywhere-interesting is 500 to 1400$ cheaper than YUL-Anywhere-interesting.

My problem is that I probably won't make any status and would probably be the very last one to be rebooked on later flights, since I just started travelling this year, so I'm worried that something horrible happens and that the first flight is 10 hours late and it just snowballs out of control and I end up missing 5 of my vacations.

Is that the necessary risk of scamming AC out of 500$? Does it simply come down to how much that 500$ is worth to me?

Of course, adding extra legs increases the probability of delays.

While some may have the $ argument, others (like myself) add in extra legs because of the extra miles accrued.

Of course, you have to figure in how much it costs to travel to LGA and back from YUL and the "time cost" involved.

I'm trying to break your post down to manageable pieces, so here goes:

a) Airlines are ultra-competitive now, and they don't want to risk losing your business to a low-cost carrier. For any delay that they are responsible for (mechanical, pilot rest time), they will at a minimum provide food and shelter in a hotel for you. With Star Alliance, they can also have many more options to rebook you on "friendly" airlines. Also, there is now "On My Way" priority remedies in the event of irregular operations (useful in the winter).

b) As for your upcoming vacation, it sounds like you are trying to book for July 2011. Way too early! You'll start seeing deals in May on ac.com for "WebSaver Fares" that will be alot better than what you see now. The Toronto - LAS fares are always kept in check because of the competition from WJ and SunWing; I don't know if YUL has similar competition.

...and you aren't scamming AC. Just as they try to set prices to maximize their profit, you can change your origin to minimize your cost. It all comes to down to how much you value your vacation time (i.e. the cost - time & money - of positioning yourself in LGA vs the amount saved)

LGA-YUL-LAS-YUL-LGA is not a permissible routing ( cabotage) if all on one ticket on AC.
So you would have to do LGA-YUL-LGA on one, and YUL-LAS-YUL on another.

Furthermore, LGA is one of the most delay-ridden cities, I would be careful of
connections when leaving from LGA, and leave more time than from most anywhere
else.

Websavers are useless to me because I don't get to leave my desk before 5:01 on friday, not comeback any later than 8:59 monday morning. So I don't really have a choice but to go ballpark.

i.e. last year, I looked almost everyday for YUL-SYD flights from march to mid-june and the cheapest I ever saw was 2550$. By the time I gave up on anything better, AC was up to 3200$, so I went with AA and QF for 2100 which was a complete mess. But now, for the last 2 of july, LGA-YYZ-YVR-SYD and back was 1438 this morning, while YUL-YVR-SYD is still at 3000

Expedia sold it to me lol

+1

I would look at flights from YOW or YYZ as options as well. And depending what it is you want to see, and how much of your vacation time you're willing to spend flying, you may be able to turn your vacation flights into a nice MR that gets you to the E level.

I know, but to get south of the border, I can use the business US Commuter flight pass that we have, and my options are LGA, EWR and ORD, so I'm just picking my poison :/

And (cover your ears), but I only get 2 weeks off in July and ten days at christmas so all my travelling times are in peak periods, so impossible to upgrade, so I'm not really after status...

Well yes, the algorithms for catching cabotage when using multi-city booking aren't always that good but it is technically an illegal ticket. You'll never get a straight search from LGA-LAS and pick AC as the carrier to show any valid routing. Unless there is a long stopover in YUL in both directions that makes it no longer considered a continuous journey it could result in a fine to the airline.

perhaps its classified under another airline ticket stock.....

Whose ticket stock it is, and who markets the flights doesn't matter much. If it was sold as 1 ticket, it's still cabotage and an illegal routing.

those tickets fall through the cracks nobody notices them these days with computers running the show. Someone has made an error and the route is now OK one day it will disappear again

Perhaps the OP used the multi-city function on expedia and entered sector by sector (LGA-YUL, YUL-LAS, LAS-YUL, YUL-LGA)? I just tried a November dummy booking for that through their website and a pricing came out but at $2,572.80 CDN which is way off the amount the OP is claiming. But it requires to overnight in YUL on both directions (less than 24hrs both times) since there are no LGA-YUL that will connect same day to YUL-LAS. Same goes on the return with LAS-YUL arriving late to not be able to catch a same day YUL-LGA.

But if only inputing LGA-LAS vv as the city pairing roundtrip, no way would an option via AC metal be an option. Must be some weird tech error.

Could it be UA marketed flights operated by AC? If it is a "USA" carrier operating flights LGA-YUL and then YUL-LAS (either one or both of the segments) I don't think there would be an issue with cabbotage.

I'll repeat my statement - It doesn't matter who is marketing the flights. One ticket can not be priced as LGA-YUL-LAS, because nobody can fly form any point in the US to another point in the US with a connection in Canada. Doesn't matter which country the carrier is based in. Much like no one can book a YYZ-YVR flight with a connection in ORD, even if AC flight numbers all the way.

This is a matter of the government protecting their local industry (and IMO, one of the reasonable things). Where it seems really weird is you can't even book, say, SFO-ANC with a connection in YVR., despite the fact the YVR is pretty much directly enroute anyway.