Fraud
 

I noticed on the OnePass site information about fraudulent ticketing. They mention the following:

Hidden Cities Ticketing, Point Beyond Ticketing, Throwaway Ticketing, or Back-to-Back Ticketing

Can anyone describe what these are?

M

As best as I can describe:

Point Beyond: Purchasing a ticket to a destination connecting through your desired city and not using the connecting flight. SFO-DEN-COS and not going on the COS instead of purchasing a SFO-DEN ticket that would more than likely cost more.

Throw Away: Purchasing a round trip ticket but only using the outbound portion.

Back to Back: Purchasing two round trip tickets that include Saturday Stayovers. Use the outbound from both tickets. If you had two trips to the same city say Monday to Thursday both weeks. One ticket would be from your originating city on the first Monday and the return would be on the second Thursday. The other ticket would originate in your Desination City on the first Thursday and the return would be on the second Monday. This gives you two tickets that appear to have Saturday Stayovers but in reality you do not stay over the Saturday in your destination city at all.

Don't really know the difference between Hidden City and Point Beyond Tix. Maybe someone else can help?

I hope this long winded response has answered your question.

Hidden Cities and Point Beyond (basically the same):

Let's say you want to go on a route the Continental has a monopoly on from their hub, such as SAN-EWR. The fare for R/T is $450. But, if you fly SAN-EWR-BOS, the fare is $350. You buy the ticket to Boston, but get off the place in Newark. You have to carry on all of your luggage. You make up some excuse on why you don't go to Boston so they don't cancel the rest of your trip.

Throwaway Ticketing:
You want to go one-way anywhere, say you are moving from Los Angeles to New York (LAX-EWR). The one-way fare is $900+. The roundtrip fare is $350. You buy the roundtrip, and don't use the second flight coupon, essentially "throwing" it away.

I am not a good expainer of back-to-back. It is used to escape high midweek fare w/o a Saturday nite stay.

[This message has been edited by Tute84 (edited 02-01-2000).]

Of course there would be no need to come up with these fancy names if they could get rid of their looney pricing practices.

Recently experimenting with prices between Denver and Dallas, for last minute tickets there is a substantially cheaper fare if you go through Amarillo (instead of non stop). One could even come up with a valid routing:
Denver->Amarillo->Denver->Dallas->Denver 4 segments which is cheaper than the last two segments Denver->Dallas->Denver

Criminal law is not my specialty, but it seems like they would have to reach pretty far to be able to show that any of these practices were "fraudulent" under state law.

Not saying they couldn't, but would you like to be CO trying to talk a prosecutor into bringing that kind of charge, or their litigators trying to bring a civil damages suit?

Greg

Back-to-Back tickets where you use only one set of the tickets and "throwaway" the second set is considered a throwaway also.

I heard that when you do a "hidden city" or "throwaway" ticket, there are problems of getting the mileage posted to your frequent flyer account. Unless you complete the travel as per ticket, the "computer" doesn't forward the miles into your account. Can anyone confirm? Or do you submit request for credit of those miles?

I don't know if what they say is really official but you can find some CO rules, notably hidden cities, throwaways and back-to-back, at
http://www.onetravel.com/rules/rules.cfm

This site also lits rules for other U.S. airlines as well.

I was on the phone yesterday to the OnePass Service Center concerning missing milage credit. I was told that the computers will not post credit for any flights on a reservation record if a ticketed segment is missing (in my case I was rerouted for one segment on another carrier) I was told that in this case I had to send in the documentation that I had completed the entire itinerary in order to receive credit.

For what it's worth, I inquired about the 2000 elite program and was told that it would be basically the same, except for some "enhancements" to upgrade opportunities for lower level elites.

Re: Hidden Cities Ticketing and Point Beyond Ticketing

I think the point is that Continental considers this practice so reprehensible that they gave it two names.

No doubt, converting part of the President's Clubs to Continental Ticket Courts will be next. Actually, that's a pretty good idea for a TV series on the Travel Channel. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

Yeah, but the airline would have a heck of a time coming up with a sympathetic jury.


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"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own."

Back when Continental was bankrupt they were known to look the other way when "fraud" was commited.

[This message has been edited by Old Gold (edited 02-05-2000).]

Old Gold hit on a major issue. If they(any airline for that matter, not just Continental) needs your(not just you, any passenger for that matter) business they will bend some rules.

A hungry airline will do more to win and keep business. What we may be seeing in the "new" onepass program is the result of too many years of good times.

Woops! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/redface.gif


[This message has been edited by essxjay (edited 02-08-2000).]

Aaaaaccccckkkkk! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/redface.gif http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/redface.gif

[This message has been edited by essxjay (edited 02-08-2000).]