I've found this thread to be very interesting! I guess the safest way to back-to-back ticket is to use two airlines that don't have any relationship with each other. One example would be US Airways and Continental. You would place the miles in the respective FF accounts and neither airline would know. The only bad part is that it would be harder to get elite status because you wouldn't be able to combine the miles.

However, does anyone know if airlines share information on passengers? I would guess this to be unlikely for non-partners. But what about NW and CO (as an example)? If you back-to-back ticket on those two and place the miles in two separate accounts, could they catch you?

Just don't do it at all...you're better off.

Absolutely, the airlines DO capture data from other carriers. They buy it from American Express, Diners, and all the credit card data centers. (By the way - the credit card companies make millions selling that data.) They use the data for marketing purposes, as well as COC compliance issues.
While trying to "negotiate" with UA after being discovered, they informed me that they buy and compare data several times a year. The bottom line is if you did not actually "stay over a Saturday night" then you are in violation, and they CAN find out. (Doesn't matter if you flew home on a different carrier or not).
I think it would be significantly harder for the airlines to discover what you're doing if you use unrelated carriers, but they assured me that it CAN be done, and IS regularly done. The guy I dealt with at UA (who was very friendly thru the whole thing) said that whenever they "sweep the net through water" they always catch a few.

An interesting and related thread in the United Fourm:

CHICAGO -- United Airlines warned travel agencies and their corporate clients last month that there would be a crackdown on back-to-back ticketing.
However, some agencies received more than a warning.

If this is true, this raises SERIOUS antitrust concerns in my mind and would be good fodder for a consumer plaintiff's antitrust firm. Essentially, this is airline A directly penalizing a customer for using airline B.

Moreover, this would be great fodder for an invasion of privacy class action suit. What other charges are on your credit card is no business of anyone but yourself and your credit card issuer.

Ouch, an expensive and unfortunate lesson mlbUMP. I guess the lessons learned from this are:

When violating airline tariffs,

- pay for your tickets with cash or the equivalent so the airline has no means of collecting additional revenue

- book your tickets on different airlines

- don't violate the rules of your primary carrier (that way you won't lose status or a pile of miles)

- try to avoid these practices in the first place (use discount carriers, creative legal routings through cities like LAS, etc.)

- purchase tickets directly from the airline so your travel agency doesn't get hit with debit memos

Thanks everybody for your replies,......but guess what, Now they published a fare w/o Sat night stay for 1/3 of what it was. Back to back sounds risky though. Have over 400k miles that I would hate to see them taken away..........

You didn't say if you were travelling to and from the same city pair on a regular basis? If you are buy a one way to your "travel city", then from that point forward buy round trips that originate in your "travel city". This worked out great for me when I travelled back and forth to Dallas for a year, and it is not against the rules. My "one way" ticket was on Southwest so I didn't blow the budget on a "big airline's" one way ticket price. The other big benefit for doing this was that since my Monday morning flight was my return ticket if I missed it wasn't the end of the world since I was in the middle of an itinerary they had to get me back "home" I was usually able to get on the next flight which was often.

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Rachel
CO - Platinum
Hilton - Diamond
SPG - Platinum
The Princess' Pictures

Interesting example you brough up. I actually have to fly NYC-CLT next week as well as the following week, both for just one midweek night. I thought that would be great for a back-to-back. Except, those good folks at US are showing fares of $736+ r/t which include a Sat night, and CO not wanting to give up that high revenue have decided to match that fare!!
(that includes my company's 'negoiated discount'). Thus I'll stick with the rules and do US both ways, as I've already made CO Platinum for 2003 and need to work on US Gold.

Milesmiles:

Make sure you change the email address listed in your profile here on FT.

If it matches what is in the CO database, then you run the risk of the lurkers out there reporting you to revenue management.

I have to ask how many airlines will do this to catch an INDIVIDUAL traveler as opposed to catching an agency that tickets BTB? I know that airlines have bought credit card data for marketing services. But to use that data and cross check it for BTB ticketing, requires a lot of effort on their part. I seriouly doubt many airlines actually use this process to catch BTB ticketing and if they do then I would imagine it would be relatively simple to circumvent this by using different credit cards.



[This message has been edited by dguruswamy (edited 07-01-2002).]

Honestly I think it is a joke that airlines can even enforce the way people purchase their tickets. They are unregulated in charging fares, why are customrs regulated in how they purchase?

I have gone somewhere on two RT tickets discarding the returns because w/o the Sat. stay, the ticket was 3 times the price. It was the company & travel agent who decided to do this (they also did back to backs for other people) and as far as I know the airlines never caught on. This was a few years ago and the detection methods may be better. Though if caught, I would defer blame to the company and/or travel agent since I did not even schedule or buy the ticket - I did not give a rat's a** how much the company paid for the ticket.

If you wanted to do back to back, I wonder if this plan would work (note I am not advocating doing it). Lets suppose you wanted to fly (for example) BOS-PIT on a Monday-Friday schedule for four weeks in a row. What if you did this:

AirlineA: 1st Monday BOS-PIT, return 4th Friday PIT-BOS.

AirlineB: 1st Friday PIT-BOS, return 2nd Monday BOS-PIT.

AirlineB: 2nd Friday PIT-BOS, return 3rd Monday BOS-PIT.

AirlineB: 3rd Friday PIT-BOS, return 4th Monday BOS-PIT.

In this schedule, AirlineA overlaps the three flights on AirlineB and every flight has a Sat. night stay. I wonder if they would catch this, or even be able to do anything about it. Again, I am not advocating it and have never tried it, but I wonder if it would work. Especially if you bought the first round trip on AirlineA then bought the subsequent flights on AirlineB AFTER flying out on the first flight. Then, how could they prove that you did not go somewhere long term then later decide that you needed to return on weekends?