Baloney. It isn't theft and it isn't fraud. The airline can seek all the money it wants. Its customers will seek to keep their money in their own pockets .There is even one airline (with a much longer history of being profitable than Delta) whose policies explicitly allow hidden-city and back-to-back ticketing. Besides, who reads the CoC, and who cares? It's barely worth the paper it's written on.

The only risks here are your FF accounts -- you don't want to make a habit of doing this repeatedly, once or twice won't hurt -- and your credit card. In the past Delta's infamous RPU (Revenue Protection Unit) has been known to charge the fare differentials to violators' creditor cards after the fact. I've heard no reports of this happening for years, but it has been done. Such charges should be easily contested since you never authorized them.

So is it okay to lie about your age to get a senior discount? How about using your kid's reduced-fare subway card for you to travel? You are lying to the airline in an effort to get a lower fare than the one they are willing to sell you for your true itinerary. That is fraud, it is wrong, and you can use moral relativism, and dismiss the concept of freedom of contract all you want to defend it, but those are the facts.

As for Southwest allowing hidden-city ticketing, good for them. Of course, they don't operate a hub-and-spoke network, so there aren't a hell of a lot of hidden-city fares out there for them to be worried about. In fact, Southwest's fares are horribly price uncompetitive when you get away from their bread-and-butter point-to-point nonstops. And their profitability has nothing to do with allowing ticketing fraud. Rather, it has to do with a lower cost structure (and recently, with aggressive fuel hedging).

Perhaps most ironic, however, is that you would contest charges on your credit card because "you never authorized them." So I guess you don't like people taking money from YOU, but you think it's okay to steal from DL's shareholders. Interesting philosophy.

I'm curious if Delta or any other airline has successfully prosecuted this. The whole "requires Saturday night stay" argument may be fine for a specific fare, but actually prosecuting it is another matter entirely.

Does Saturday night stay required mean that one isn't allowed to leave the city? The airport? If it applies to using DL to fly elsewhere, why wouldn't it apply to vehicles as well?

"Saturday night stay" is an informal way of summarizing the actual fare rule. To my knowledge, DL doesn't have an actual fare rule that reads "Saturday night stay required".

An example of a DL minimum stay requirement is as follows (for a TE10Q3SJ fare basis):
MINIMUM STAY: RETURN FIRST SUNDAY AFTER DEPARTURE FROM ORIGIN

So DL's "miniumum stay" rules don't actually require that you stay anywhere, just that you don't fly back until a certain amount of time has elapsed after your departure.

Right. So how are you violating the fare rules by booking tickets between trips?

You violate the fare rules by reorganizing your segments to have Saturday night stays.

Thus, if you had the following itineraries:

19APR11 (T) ATL-LGA
21APR11 (R) LGA-ATL

26APR11 (T) ATL-LGA
28APR11 (R) LGA-ATL

You would have two trips, no Saturday night stay.

But if you reticketed as:

19APR11 (T) ATL-LGA
28APR11 (R) LGA-ATL

21APR11 (R) LGA-ATL
26APR11 (T) ATL-LGA

You would have two trips, both with Saturday night stays.

However, the latter example is not the true itinerary. Your second trip shows an origination point at LGA, when in reality that's the return on your first trip.

So they key is did you do something to violate the fare rule through manipulating your itinerary.

I still don't get how this is "lying."

If the 2nd trip is on a different airline (or Amtrak or even a rental car) is it still "lying?"

No question it is against Delta's rules and your SM account is at their mercy if caught, but I do not see how one can call it "lying" or "fraud." Do you have a case where somebody was successfully prosecuted for this?

Taking your questions one at a time:

(1) It's lying because you are masking your true O&Ds. Moreover, you start the second trip before you complete the first trip. It's manipulating your itinerary for the purpose of evading a fare rule. Thus fraudulent. No different than buying a youth subway ticket for your kid, and using it yourself.

(2) It is still back-to-back ticketing if you do it on another airline, but harder to catch. While it would be legal for the airlines to share data under the antitrust laws, there is still litgation risk. And if you rented a car and drove to avoid the higher fare, then you really don't value your time very highly :)

(3) As I've said before, nobody's going to try and prosecute this criminally. Much easier just to cancel all downline bookings, close the FFP account, and debit memo the travel agent. But it's still fraud.

I have absolutely no way of knowing if Delta has actually prosecuted this. If they have, well, that's pathetic. If they've cancelled people's skymiles accounts over it, that's pathetic too.

I'm fully aware that Delta and many other carriers forbid it, but the reason they forbid it is because they want you to pay maximum price each time you fly.

I see absolutely no reason why Delta should care how I structure my flying as long as I pay the price advertised for the itinerary that they sell me.

But you're not flying that itinerary. You're taking two itineraries, breaking them apart, and flying them as two different itineraries that would have priced differently. You're stealing. Feel high and mighty all you want, but you're no different or better than a common thief switching pricetags or jumping a turnstyle.

But they did fly the entire two itineraries. I don't agree that the trying to find the best deals is identical as stealing. I just take it that back-to-back ticketing is frowned upon by airlines, but not for the reasons (especially lying about O/D) that you mentioned in the previous post.

Using your logic than the following would also be considered setaling:
- Flying to a nearby town beacause it's cheaper
- Flying on a different day/time than what is intended because it's cheaper
- Flying one airlines half-way, than continue on different airlines (nested ticketing) because it's cheaper.
All of the above constitutes loss of income to the airlines, due to the passengers lying about their true O/D.

Am I stealing if I choose to fly DL to SIN even though my true destination is CGK? ( I could book an itinerary to CGK on delta.com at a much higher price, so i chose to fly SIN-CGK on an LCC) I did misrepresent my O/D to Delta. Is it also illegal?

There is a fundamental difference between your examples, and back-to-back ticketing.

Again, a back-to-back ticketing itinerary looks like this:

Itinerary 1
Coupon 1: 26APR11 ATL-LGA
Coupon 2: 10MAY11 LGA-ATL

Itinerary 2
Coupon 1: 28APR11 LGA-ATL
Coupon 2: 12MAY11 ATL-LGA

Under this itinerary, you are representing that you will be taking two trips: (1) a 15 day itinerary with ATL as your point-of-origin; and (2) a 15 day itinerary with LGA as your point of origin. However, you are really taking two 3 day trips, both with ATL as your point of origin. That is the deception - you do not intend to start your second itinerary in LGA - that is the return of your first itinerary

Such is not true with flying to a nearby town. If you were to ticket these itineraries as follows, you would not be misrepresenting your true O&Ds in order to get around a fare rule:

Itinerary 1
Coupon 1: 26APR11 ATL-PHL, drive to NY
Coupon 2: 28APR11 PHL-ATL

Itinerary 2
Coupon 1: 10MAY11 ATL-PHL, drive to NY
Coupon 2: 12MAY11 PHL-ATL

Shopping for a better fare - and flying that as ticketed - is not the same as buying two itineraries and using them in an overlapping manner. Same with flying on a different day/time.

As for flying a nested ticket, that too is different from back-to-back ticketing. Again, you're not misrepresenting your true origin point. You're flying the segments in an itinerary in order, as ticketed, without starting another itinerary to/from the same cities in the interim. Thus:

26APR11 ATL-(DL)-DFW
26APR11 DFW-(AA)-CDG
28APR11 CDG-(AA)-DFW
28APR11 DFW-(DL)-ATL

The two tickets are on totally different O&Ds - you bought an ATL-DFW round trip, and a DFW-CDG round trip. Just because you didn't buy it on an interline fare doesn't make it fraudulent. I'll repeat this because it's the point you're missing: ticketing fraud involves misrepresenting your true itinerary to evade fare rules, not adjusting your itinerary to get a lower fare.

In the nested ticket example, you're using all of the coupons ont he AA ticket before you get back to the DL ticket. And you're not trying to avoid a fare rule - you're trying to get a lower sum-of-locals fare. You are not getting a Saturday night stay fare without staying a Saturday night. Thus you've evaded no fare rule.

In the back-to-back example, you're going back and forth on the itineraries to qualify for a fare based on an assumption (a Saturday night stay in your destination point) that is not true.

One final example. Many tourist attractions charge a lower price to locals than they do to out-of-state residents. This is because the recognize that a local's demand for something like Disneyland is going to be generally lower than tourist's. So let's assume you live in NY, and your twin brother lives in LA. Would it be ethical for you to use your twin's driver's license to misrepresent yourself as a local to get the lower price? Because that's what back-to-back ticketing is. Misrepresenting your true itinerary (A-to-B x2) with a fake one (A-to-B and B-to-A).

I thought most airlines were doing away with the Saturday night stay requirment. What is the purpose of this fare rule. I can fly to EWR, do a same day turn and the fare is much higher then if I stay over Saturday and return Sunday night. Makes no sense, Saturday nights are usually the slowest period for airlines, and Sunday nights are busy so why require to stay over and if you don;t charge alot more when you are filling alot of empty seats.

Business travelers are willing to pay more than leisure travelers. Business travel typically doesn't include a Saturday night stay, so by putting in the rule you can segment between the two. So it's a mechanism to enforce price discrimination - which is a good thing overall (leads to more output and a wider spectrum of fares).

That being said, U.S. airlines have gone to more one-way fares, for which a Saturday night stay is not required. Thus back-to-back ticketing is less of an issue than it used to be. Still exists on some ultra-low fares though.

There is no such thing as fraudulent ticketing in cases where you purchase one or more tickets offered for sale and you actually pay for them. Other than forcing you to use coupons in sequence there is no recourse. Anything else is airline baloney.

Fraud is buying tickets on a stolen card or some such thing.

Hidden cities are the same thing. If I can get a ticket beyond the point of my destination cheaper and get off where I want to there is nothing wrong or illegal about it.