Credit card surcharges are illegal for sales in France. Low cost carriers violate this restriction by contending that sales are done through a foreign, e.g. Irish, web site.

Has any airline, including KLM/AF, been known for cancelling or taking action against nested tickets?

Supporting what Nick told, the real issue is not nested tickets but back to back.

If you want to be sure there is no problem at all, buy them direct through AF site or better call AF and buy the two nested tickets on the phone with the same operator.

In this situation, for French law, AF is the professional and you are the layman, they have the obligation to inform you.

If they say on the phone it is illegal, you have to back down and not take the risk. Having bought a lot of nested tickets in the same operation with the same operator but several ticket numbers, I never had a problem. I add I never bought back to back, because, IMHO, it is obviously unfair and a way to circumvent the rules.

I did exactly the same last year with KLM and no problems at all, flew everything, got my miles only with booking the seconds flight on internet I was asked to call the call center and an agent asked me to be sure ( and then it was OK).

I understand nesting as B-A/A-B segments inside A-B/B-A ones in order to get A-B/B-A/A-B/B-A cheaper than two seperate A-B/BA.

But what is back to back?

This exactly describes how I understand b2b ticketing. (With a special case of this being the situation in which you do not necessarily fly all segments.)

So my question is: what type of nesting tickets are we talking about that many here say airlines dont mind? Do you mean A-B-C-B-A carried out via an A-B-A ticket and a B-C-B ticket (aka end-on-end ticketing)? Or some other type of nesting that I cannot think of?

I think that the real problem for airlines is back to back (AB, BA, AB, BA). It is a visa issue aswell (for instance, China does not allow transit visas for HAN-PEK-SGN, but allows for HAN-PEK-NRT, same countries in one case, different in the second case).

End on End or complex tickets (for instance CDG-HNL return and included one HNL-SEA, or more frequently tickets this sort : open-jaw CDG-BKK and NRT-CDG, and another ticket BKK-NRT) are not a problem.

To be clearer, the "Sat/sun night rule" is, in fact, "Sat/sun night in the arrival country". For instance, CDG/NYC plus ATL/CDG follow this sort of rule. If you have a nested ticket NYC-LAS-ATL, it is obvious you stay in the US.

Last explanation.

Suppose that a LHR-HKG is about 2900€ biz, and a CDG-HKG is about 3500€. If you choose the End on End option, you buy a CDG LHR ticket, about 200 €. You take a risk, and the company only "losts" 10%. The bet is not worth the risk.

Suppose now you have two eco flights to HEL, weeks one and two, for one day each time. The Back to Back tickets saves 60% at least !

To sum up this discussion: nested tickets as such are no problem, unless they are nested in a back-to-back fashion to circumvent a min-stay rule. Does everybody agree?

Gajan, do you agree, too?

(This would imply, btw, that the OP should not proceed with his/her idea.)

To my question if they (the airline) actually took actions against people who bought nested tickets they answered that they did not.

Huh? I don't get it.

What exactly don't you understand about my sentence?

The underlined piece in the quote. To "circumvent a min-stay", could you give an example?

I'm not a contract law expert but I remember reading on FT a while ago that someone more knowledgeable has read through all the kleine lettertjes of KLM and found nothing against nested ticketing.

As customers of KLM we are so used to "Computer says no!". Our defence in this case is "Computer says yes!". So, yes, we can.


Now, for the general discussion, I know that some airlines have terms in their CoC that forbid back-to-back ticketing. I've always wondered what should the following person do?

Buying ticket from another airline should solve the problem. But what if there is only one airline serving the route concerned?

On the other hand, what happens to nested tickets such as ORY-A-ORY nested in A-CDG-A, both on AF?

Or, BSL-A-BSL in A-MLH-A? [Are there airlines serving both BSL and MLH? :confused: ]

From experience...

I have done this blatantly every single week for 18 months to the same destination in 2006/7.

This allowed for flights back to Paris (home) for the weekend at £170 instead of midweek flights to my project destination at (approx) €650. Hence, my company allowed me to fly hime every weekend - and my marriage is still fine.

Problems with the Airline, NONE. Sometimes when I booked with my corporate TA they did say - this is not quite in line with the spirit of AF's pricing structure. Many times I booked directly with Air France (call centre) who were absolutely fine with it.

Additionally, on that route there were a number of other "regulars" that I'd see on the monday morning/friday evening flights and after 18 months we got to know each other quite well - most of them (all Plat) confirmed that they also booked back to back.

So on that particular route, there were at least 10 people on a 110 seater every week very unsubtly and blatantly booking back to backs - I would suggest AF knows this is happening, and would act if they thought they could (or maybe they just accept that as being a segment of traveller that they are OK with).

Sorry, my iphone does not show underlined pieces. The OP's scenario has obviously been designed to get cheaper tickets by getting around a minimum stay restriction. (But as we learned in this thread, while Af might not like it, they do not seem to be particularly keen on taking any action.)