apados

This may be something I should know, but for the life of me can't remember.. Also, I am in no way trying to break the rules, just trying to know what I should do when booking.

I have 3 back to back ( 6 M -F) trips coming up before the end of the year starting in a little over a week. Basically I'm flying to the same place on two consecutive weeks.

While I do get travel reimbursed, I try to keep costs for clients as low as possible. As such, i was wondering if its "legal" to basically book a R/T itin. for Monday on week 1(Point 1 to Point 2) and Friday on week 2 (Point 2 to Point 1)and then another R/T itin. for Friday on Week 1 (Point 2 to Point 1) and Monday on week 2 (Point 1 to Point 2).

I don't even know if its cheaper to do it this way, but was wondering if all you wise FT'ers out there knew what the rules were on something like this?

I am not planning to "ditch" any legs. I will definitely need to fly all of them (I like to get home...)..

Is there a name for this kind of booking?

AndyTLe

You should be fine. I've done it before. With the often unknown nature of business travel, I would think DL would recognize it as genuine travel and not an attempt to do something prohibited in DL's fare rules.


If anything, it could be seen as:
http://www.delta.com/planning_reserv...jsp#prohibited

apados

Interesting...Thanks. Yeah I'm not trying to circumvent the Saturday night stay. Although fare price is something I look out for, I'm not really trying to gyp anyone out of anything..

zman

Did not know there were many SAT night stay fares remaining, especailly domestic fares.

AndyTLe

Airlines brought them back early 2008.

http://www.thestreet.com/s/airlines-.../10400659.html

gtownguy

Yes, it is technically against the rules, but you won't have any problem at all - especially if you use all the segments. I have done it myself 3 or 4 times and never had a problem with anything, including getting my miles.

ffI

In the UA and Mileage run forums they call it nesting, (1 trip within another)
Best not to link your SM number to the reservations until after the flights
- call and get credit separately, but then you may not get good seats or upgrades.
Alternately see if you can do it on 2 airlines, that is never a problem.

travis bickle

and there is nothing illegal about it.

The first R/T flight you describe describes the outer points of the dates of your flight, the second R/T flight you describe all take place within that time frame, hence "nested".

This is fine to do and the airline should NOT call you on it. How would they know whether you needed to fly home for an anticipated function that occured within the timeframe of a business trip??

If you really have any qualms remaining, book your first R/T flight on airline X, and your second R/T flight on airline Y. Absolutely no problem.

Evan!

I've done the nested itin thing on Delta and never had any problem.

avidflyer

Yup it has a name and it is called a "Nested Pair". Nothing to echo everyone else; not against the rules and can be very helpful in certain situations.

jzumrick

Unless things have changed over the last year, a careful review of the contract of carriage states the nested flights are not allowed. Still, I am sure that nested flights are not easily recognized by airlines and a lot of people have gotten away with it. For all of these there are other fliers who have lost their frequent flyers miles and status as a result of nested travel.

To avoid repercussions flyers have used two separate airlines, and not listed their frequent flyer numbers on reservations.

travis bickle

if they give you any problem over nested flights.

An example - [dates purely arbitrary]
DEP SAT ARR ATL on 01JUN
...DEP ATL ARR SAT ON 05JUN
...DEP SAT ARR ATL ON 08JUN
DEP ATL ARR SAT ON 15JUN

Do you mean to tell me that the airline is correct to give you heartburn on the above if you fly all the segments in the correct order? WHY?
You had to interrupt your business trip to be at home for your child's graduation from college/high school/reform school and the airline has a "CONTRACTUAL RIGHT" to give you grief??

I repeat, ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM.

robbert

What you describe is back-to-back ticketing, it can be used to avoid sat. night stays and is generally not allowed. So use 2 airlines and don't cross reference anything through a FFP. Or buy a O/W ticket for the first outbound and then do R/T from the destination until you finish up with another O/W to get back to your original starting point. Silly, but this is how ticketing evolved (except for some of the LCCs).

Pharaoh

Time to straighten out the terminology. Back-to-back flights are a special subset of nested flights wherein the city pairs are the same and often interpreted by the airlines to indicate an attempt to circumvent minimum stay rules such as a Saturday night.

Other nested flights are perfectly "legal" everywhere.

Example of "legal" nested flights are AAA-BBB-AAA with BBB-CCC-BBB in the middle.
Example of "illegal" back-to-back nested flights are AAA-BBB-AAA with BBB-AAA-BBB in the middle.

Several years back my wife flew to PHL to pick up her elderly mother and bring ber back here for a week. The flights were back-to-back as in the second example above but the BBB-AAA-BBB was for 2 people. She was "caught" and threated with airline-divorce or somesuch and it took a little bit of dancing around to get them to accept there was no attempt to circumvent rules but rather to favilitate travel for the old woman.

Seminole_Kev

Interesting. A few years ago I had to go down to STT for business, but had a previous commitment one night that I had to fly back for in the middle of the trip, and fly back to STT the next day to complete the work. Booked the first out, and final back as one trip. Then booked the "middle" back and out part as a separate trip.

start of trip: MCO > STT middle: STT > MCO > STT return: STT to MCO

Now this was on American, but they didn't give me any grief about it.