COPlatRocks

Anybody been busted for throwaway or point-beyond ticketing?

I know it's against the rules, you can lose your OnePass account, and all that...

...but has anyone dabbled in it and been caught? If so, what actually happens?

Sometimes when I'm traveling, and plan to fly through my home city to another city, my plans change, and I just get off the 1st plane and go home... Which turns me into an apparent Point Beyond Abuser...

Or sometimes when I'm traveling, and want to go home early or late, I simply skip the return flight, coming home on another airline, or (*gasp*) driving! ... Which turns me into an apparent Throwaway Abuser...

How likely am I to get in trouble and lose the miles, status, and general sense of love from Continental, that I've worked so hard to earn and maintain?

I'd sleep better at night knowing if, say, the programs that look for this ignore it if it only happens now and then for a Platinum...

chasbondy

Way before 9/11, I flew to Boston on business and was then to fly to Albany before flying home. Since it was the fall color season, I decided to take the train to Albany. Luckily I left Albany before they did the manual ticket match, so my flight back to San Diego wasnt cancelled.
But, today, with an E-ticket, I'm sure the morons in what they call customer service, would consider what I did a crime, and would rip my OP account away, call the police to have me arrested and make me pay an extra $1000 to get back to San Diego.
(I actually dont remember if I did that on CO or AA)

Billiken

Approx 7 years ago one of my business partners was caught doing back-to-back ticketing. He has a summer home in Maine and goes there on the weekends in August.

What's interesting is that it wasn't his idea and he did not book the tickets.
He books all his travel through a travel agency....flights, hotel, car, etc.
(He still dicatates business letters to a secretary.)

He received a call from the travel agent and had to pay an additional $1,800.

He no longer uses that travel agent.

Xyzzy

I used to be a back-to-back ticket abuser. That was in the days of paper tickets. I'd often have so many tickets open that I got confused. I recall once handing an agent the wrong ticket and then asking for it back and then handing over the right one. But that was years ago. Nowadays, with electronic ticketing, this is a bit harder if not impossible.

Think about your situation the other way around. What if you miss your flight somehow and know that your ticket is invalid so you find another way home. What if you decide to change your plans and the airline wants more than the cost of renting a car and driving home to change your existing ticket? The airline can't force you to sit in the seat. They've told you over and over that your ticket is worthless if you don't use it.

You might decide to be nice and call them to tell them you've missed your flight or changed your plans and that you'll just rent a car/take a bus/take a train/hitch a ride home. If you do so they'll note your record and remove the abandoned segment(s). That might limit your exposure to punishment, but then again it might not. It's certainly better than just leaving the ticket open, though IMHO.

As long as you don't make a habit of this behaviour, an airline isn't going to come after you. If you do it all the time you can expect trouble.

hillrider

When tickets were mostly bought through agents, airlines would charge back the agents: it is the agent's contractual responsibility to ensure that the rules are enforced, and the agent had violated their contract with the airline.

I have yet to see an instance where the airline has gone after an individual purchasing directly from the airline itself. If they decided to go after an individual, the airline would have to be able to withstand a court challenge, and therefore be able to explain why, in a back-to-back case, it willingly sold all those tickets to the passenger, or, in a last-segment throwaway case, show economic harm. The former is hardly explainable (they could build systems to "catch" back-to-back before a ticket is issued), the latter requires lots of data and even then may not stand up to scrutiny given overbooking (the potential for making more money by replacing your cheap seat with a high-paying last minute standby passenger, and collect from BOTH of you) and the fact that if your seat did indeed go out empty, costs would be lower (fuel savings) and they still got to keep your $$ (a net benefit).

star_world

Does every business you deal with that has rules you dislike simply contain "morons in what they call customer service"? Or is this restricted to your CO rants?

The reality is very simple - if you want to do back to back ticketing, just travel on two different airlines. Doing it on a single airline will probably get you caught, according to the Conditions of Carriage that you signed up to. I don't see why it has to be any more complicated than that.

speedster1978

What is considered back to back these days?

star_world

For example:

Ticket 1
EWR-LHR 01 Jan on CO
LHR-EWR 20 Jan on CO

Ticket 2
LHR-EWR 03 Jan on CO
EWR-LHR 18 Jan on CO

This would allow you to have two short stays in LHR, without a Saturday stay in each case, and the fare would be far lower than doing this legitimately.

3Cforme

I would call that nested ticketing. Segments are used in correct order; all segments are used as you have described it.

One might describe throwaway ticketing this way:
Ticket 1
EWR-LHR 01 Jan on CO
LHR-EWR 20 Jan on CO - thrown away

Ticket 2
LHR-EWR 03 Jan on CO
EWR-LHR 18 Jan on CO - thrown away

Two RT Sat-night stay tickets could prove cheaper than a simple 01 Jan EWR-LON, 03 JAN LON-EWR round trip.

SuperG1955

CO Insider gave me the following information earlier this year. I was looking at an MR on the weekend excursion out and back on the same days but the basics still apply to your situation.

J.Edward

Yeep.

Now here's where it gets interesting: let's say the situation was like this:You plan to use all the segments, in order, but have constructed the tickets this way to take advantage of Saturday night stays...are you in violiation of the CO's or UA's COC?

UAX_Brasilia

I don't see how that could be illegal...but how about this:

Ticket 1
EWR-LHR 01 Jan on US
LHR-EWR 20 Jan on US

Ticket 2
LHR-EWR 03 Jan on UA
EWR-LHR 18 Jan on UA

AND you give your UA Mileage Plus number on both?

PSU Mudder

Absolutely not. There is nothing in the COC that tells you what you can do and where you can go while on your journey, including making a trip back to the states on another airline.

I can understand them going after back to back ticketing, getting off at the hub, and other throwaway schemes where one doesn't fly all the segments purchased (and I suspect they only go after habitual offenders, not the person whose plans change). But it would be really assinine for them to go after nested tickets, where someone purchases and uses all of TWO tickets. If I ever got a call about that I would say "You don't like the tickets I purchased? Fine, next time I'll only buy one on your airline and buy one on another and you lose the revenue."

Vulcan

Agree 100%. CO would be quickly out of business if it tried to tell its business customers that it (CO) was going to tell them that their travelers could not fly on anther airline while on a CO itinerary.

HobokenFlyer

I have to admit I have done that once about 7 years ago.

Had to go to PIT twice in a month and it was cheaper to split it up one ticket on CO and one on US...of course didn't claim mileage on US with CO (because you CAN'T ).

Nothing happened to me, but that doesn't mean it wasn't slightly naughty. Was I trying to circumvent CO's tariff rules? Not necessarily, I was using the free market and using a competitor to get a better deal, I flew all segments that I said I would fly. To me it's no different if I rented a car and drove home on the nested itinerary.

Now if this would be an issue with mileage, if it was say a DL or NW ticket? I don't think so, because I think it's easier and cheaper for CO to take away a customer's FF status and miles than to FILE A LAWSUIT which is the only other way they could get restitution and since you didn't use two separate CO tickets to circumvent their tariff rules, I don't think it would be a problem, now if you used CO ticket stock and used CO codeshares on a pure NW or DL flights THEN you might get in trouble.

But this is all speculation until we hear from the man.

- HF