Booking Question: Separate Tickets or Multi-Destination Ticket
 

Hey there everyone - I have a question in regards to which would be the best way to book my upcoming trip. I have to make a decision by Thursday/Friday as that is when the 21 day window is up for the LIM portion of the trip.

My route combo is as follows:

Dec 23 or 24 - IAH to LIM
Dec 30 - LIM to IAH
Dec 30 - IAH to PHL
Jan 2 or 3 - PHL to IAH

The pricing seems to be about the same whether I book as a multi destination or as two separate round trips.

Are there any benefits to booking separately or together? Does it matter how I proceed?

* as a side note; I should be able to crack the illustrious Silver barrier thanks to these trips. I was in LIM for the past 10 days and with the upcoming plans I will eek out Silver this year, my first time as an Elite.

I'm assuming that the separate bookings would be IAH-LIM-IAH and IAH-PHL-IAH.

If you really do intend to fly from LIM through to IAH without stopping for any appreciable amount of time in Houston then book it as a single ticket. If anything were to happen on the return and you didn't get to IAH in time to pick up the PHL flight you'd be hosed. It may change the fare rules and the change fees a bit but if you're pretty confident on the travel dates and times I'd just do the single ticket.

And your qualification for Silver (Congrats!) doesn't require the PHL-IAH flight, right? Because that won't be until the 2011 qualification starts.

Thanks, sbm.

Correct on the IAH-LIM-IAH & IAH-PHL-IAH and also correct on not needing the final PHL-IAH leg to qualify. I would get it on December 30th's IAH-PHL leg.

Since I live in Houston now I thought of booking as one and taking the 1605hrs flight from IAH to PHL. That gives me 9 hours of time to factor in the usual lateness of 591 from LIM and time to go home and change and sleep a little before going back for the Philly flight.

I just didn't know if there were advantages or disadvantages to booking as a whole or doing 'em separate.

Fares for IAH-LIM are shockingly low for Christmastime, by the way. Last time I checked those numbers they were in the $1500-1600 range.