I need to fly 2 R/Ts from EWR-IND, each overnight. Itinerary as follows:

EWR-IND 7/13 and return on 7/14
EWR-IND 7/24 and return on 7/24

I was looking to buy nested roundtrips to ease the fare pain. The slight twist is that I'll be traveling with my daughter on the bookended segments, and flying solo on the middle segments.

What are the chances that CO will flag this as a violation of the CoC?

What are the fare rules for the buckets you're thinking of booking?

I did a CHS-IAH-ORD-IAH-CHS trip through my corporate travel agent with a personal trip doing ORD-IAH-CHS-IAH-ORD booked on my own wedged in between it and had no problems......

These are standard, discounted economy tix. Not sure if this is the part in the rules that's relevant, but they state:

"OUBLE OPEN JAWS NOT PERMITTED.
ADD-ONS NOT PERMITTED.
END-ON-END
END-ON-END COMBINATIONS PERMITTED. VALIDATE ADJACENT
LINE OF FLIGHT FARE COMPONENTS ONLY. TRAVEL MUST BE VIA
THE POINT OF COMBINATION."

Since OP stated "buy nested roundtrips to ease the fare pain", I would assume that (s)he is trying to circumvent the fare rules.
So it is against the C&C.
What are the chances CO catches it? I've got no clue, but I wouldn't do it.

A completely legal and non-nested way to do this is buy a OW ticket EWR-IND on 7/13, a RT IND-EWR-IND for 7/14 and 7/24, and a OW IND-EWR on 7/24. I don't know if this will save you $, but it might. This is a more useful method when you are doing more than a couple of trips.

If flying alone on all segments, this is classic nesting, which airlines would say violates the nesting rules, and might go after.

Yet... this looks like a classic "parent dropping off minor for holiday week". If there's two pax on the outside, and one pax on the inside, I can wrap my mind around this not breaking any rules, especially if the additional pax is a minor, as you'd presumably absolutely want them on the same PNR. If the extra pax had to be on the same PNR during transport, and CO gave you grief about "technical" nesting... you'd have to buy six one-way tickets, or maybe 2x outside and 2x inside one-ways.

If you want to get creative, can you buy the outside tickets on CO, and the inside tickets on UA using the CO codeshare (and apply each PNR to the respective operating carrier's FF program, so the mileage history wouldn't show the nesting)?

And if worse gets to worse, could you do the insides on a DL direct to JFK?

Nesting another trip inside a ticket is usually allowed. Returning back to the point of origin on a separate ticket to circumvent the minimum stay is classic back-to-back ticketing. This is exactly what's happening here.


Yet... this looks like a classic "parent dropping off minor for holiday week". If there's two pax on the outside, and one pax on the inside, I can wrap my mind around this not breaking any rules, especially if the additional pax is a minor, as you'd presumably absolutely want them on the same PNR. If the extra pax had to be on the same PNR during transport, and CO gave you grief about "technical" nesting... you'd have to buy six one-way tickets, or maybe 2x outside and 2x inside one-ways.
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While you seem to be able to rationalize the family values argument, I don't think it's a justification for back-to-back ticketing.

Hmmmm. this has me thinking ...

I have a MR booked:

SEA-IAH-RDU-EWR-SEA

I live close to EWR so needed to take a positioning flight. I booked:

PHL-IAH-SEA-EWR-PHL .

Therefore, I fly PHL-IAH-SEA on one PNR.

Switch to another PNR to do the MR, ending up back in SEA at around 8ish, and then take the red-eye to EWR and then on to PHL on the original PNR.


Is that a nested or back-back ticket? Not purchased to circumvent any fare rules, just to position myself to do the MR from SEA.

It is neither. It is two separate itineraries that happen to overlap in dates so nested calendar-wise but not in the CoC sense. You aren't returning to the same point of origin and you aren't doing it to circumvent fare rules. You're fine.

If CO gave you any grief about it, I wold respond "no problem, next time I'll just buy one of the tickets on CO and one on another airline, so as not to violate your fare rules. Would that work better for you?"

LOL! Funny! I like!!!

If you need to do a classic Back-to-back, then use another carrier for the inside pair. Go to a different alliance, don't fly UA and submit your CO number.

B7

Hmm, newbie that I am, I didn't realize that nesting was illegal! Can anyone shed some light on the following:

I have a roundtrip, EWR-SFO on Continental (booked by a travel agency), and now I've had to change my plans. So after a few days in SFO, I'm flying United out of there to ORD and then to BOS. I'm not returning to EWR by plane, and I was going to just waste the return trip SFO-EWR. Is this illegal? Should I not use my OnePass frequent flyer number on one of these segments?

Thanks!

Don't worry, there's no problem with your itinerary.