Combining two cheap tickets - is this allowed?
 

New to FT, and need your help...

I am a few legs short of reaching gold, however work is not allowing me to book a nice leisure trip before the end of the year anymore and I don't want to pay through the nose just for the sake of becoming gold.

I am thinking of booking two return tickets:
1) the first one flying from A to B on day 1 in the morning and back from B to A a week later in the evening
2) the second one, booked on KLM's site for the country of place B, flying from B to A in the evening on day 1 and from A to B in the morning of the day of the return leg of ticket 1.

I would be using all flights of all tickets and as such there are no fake return tickets.

Do you think I can get away with this or will KLM try and stop it?
Am I allowed to book a ticket from a KLM site in a country other than mine (the ticket originating that particular country)?

Thank you very much in advance for your well-appreciated advice!!

I have done exactly as you plan with KLM before, without problem: booked GLA-AMS/AMS-GLA (1 week apart) from the UK website and AMS-GLA/GLA-AMS, 'nested' inside the first ticket, from the Dutch website.

I entered my FB number in both cases: the only 'issue' was that, for the second booking, the website 'knew' about my first booking and asked, "are you sure you want to make this booking?" I was sure, and did it.

All four segments were correctly credited to my account, without so much as a peep of complaint.

-- Henry

Oh, and Welcome to FlyerTalk!

I indeed heard once that the system would detect a "nested itinerary". In the case of HenryIII is only seems that it's a warning to not double book, not to prohibit it so I assume you must be fine.
Do bear in mind that should your A-B flight is delayed/cancelled, your B-A flight on the same day won't accept responsibility to put you on a later flight if you miss it.

During our chat with AF/FB staff in April they said that nesting of tickets can be done without getting slapped with cancelling of tickets etc.

well, the reason they used to care so much was not because of nesting but because you were subverting their minimum stay-away rules.
Mid-week rtn flights were much more expensive than rtns that stayed away SAT night and they had minimum stay-away times, so they could charge business people much higher fares.

But since the low cost airlines the difference is not very much so I guess they have no problem with your nested tickets.

Gajan, are you saying that AF/KL have absolutely no problem with someone using the nested ticket strategy?

Regarding one of the OP's questions that has not been addressed yet: Yes, nowadays you are allowed to book a ticket from any country you wish. In principle at least. (For some problem countries KL might have some extra provisions though.)

You can certainly book a ticket from a country other than yours.
But AFAIK on the website you must pay in the currency of that country. If you wish yo use your own currency (to reduce credit card bills) you must book on the phone.

Good to know!

Did the same thing...isn't really 'wrong' I think. Just 2 separate bookings with an overlaps of dates, so fly back and forth on two different days! All segments credited correctly

Thank you for all advice!

I have booked the tickets. Didn't get the warning message Henry mentioned...

What did surprise me is that on the second ticket I booked, originating from France (the other country), the fuel surcharge is double (!) of the fuel surcharge charged on the ticket originating from my home country. How can they justify that, as all flights are the same on both tickets :confused:

I was also surprised (in this case: pleasantly) by the fact that I didn't have to pay the credit card surcharge for the ticket booked through the French website!

I have more than half a day to spend at the destination between inbound and outbound flights, I should be alright in that respect.

Again, thanks to you all. What a wonderful forum FlyerTalk is. I wish I had discovered it earlier!

If you book klm tickets on other airline sites they are normally cheaper and less fees.... then on the KLM site itself.

As posted last night, I managed to make the bookings.

But now, 24 hours later, I still haven't received the etickets! Luckily the numbers are mentioned in the booking itself on my FB page, so I think everything's ok, but I wonder why KLM didn't send them...:confused:

I do not see any legal reason allowing any carrier to prohibit the sale of "nested" tickets in France.
Each ticket is an individual one.

There is an important drawback in this operation : if you miss one of your flghts, your are not protected for the other ticket, and if you miss the second flight, AF is allowed to charge your card because you dont fly the flight you are supposed to fly.

In fact, "real nested ticket" is common, I mean nested ticket issued not to circumvent the rules, but for other reasons.

For instance, you buy an ORY FDF ticket for a two weeks vacation. Then you buy an FDF Pointe à Pitre return, inside this ticket.

I sometimes bought this sort of ticket through Le Club.

It is not so much nested tickets as back to backs which are the issue. IIRC, Delta explicitly disallows back to back ticketing in its CoC but, afaik, no other airline does (although some terms could arguably be considered as implicitly referring to such practices).

You are right, Nick, I understand your point.

The big difference is that "legal" (I mean perfectly normal in the Company point de vue as well) nested ticket is the obvious side trip.

Another exemple : you fly ORY/LCY on wednesday (meeting in London), your return being EDI/CDG on next monday night because you have another meeting there (at EDI). You are on vacation thursday and friday, you fly to AMS, return to EDI sunday evening. I don not see any problem.

A ORY FDF return with a FDF ORY inside sounds funny because it's pretty obvious you screw the rules, but IMHO not illegal.

DL exemple : you fly CDG HNL, two weeks, and want to spend the middle week end at SFO. I suppose DL will not ask any question if you book these two tickets.

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.)

Mike's case should not be a problem in any case. Obviously, he he never intended to use his tickets to get a cheaper fare by getting around a min-stay restriction. Even if an airline is strongly against b2b ticketing and regularly takes follow-up measures, it should not be difficult to explain to them what the background of Mike's bookings is. I would call this case "accidental b2b ticketing", as opposed to "genuine b2b ticketing".

I have read that LH sent some stern emails to people who engaged in this or similar practices saying their M&L accounts might be cancelled if they carried on with it.

I have also heard of travel agents who booked such itineraries being sent large ADMs for the difference between the amount charged and the unrestricted fares.

Dear friend,

Could you tell us if these tickets were BtB or nested tickets ?

I can't remember what the LH one was (ask at the M&L forum); the ADMs were for nested tickets, hidden-city, and throwaway returns.