tvnwz

I have done this all the time many times a year over the past 10 years. Have had no problems what so ever.

TomMM

All of that to save $30?

orca15

OP saved $30 plus a whole RT fare.

flyerCO

Again as long as it's on one ticket no violation has occurred. Nested tickets requires just that tickets (plural).

You can in fact combine a fare that requires RT together as one-ways in one ticket. Have done this for years. As long as the rules don't have any restrictions on combing them you're fine. Even then as issued on one ticket there's nothing DL can do.

thetoolman

Update - I just finished flying the 3rd and 4th legs of this ticket. It worked in the sense that I got home without too much trouble, but the system seemed confused by my itinerary. Specifically, the last leg of the ticket was the same as the 2nd leg of the ticket, but 60 days later. I could not check in online or via the Delta app, and when I tried to check in at the counter the agent had to call support to figure out how to do it. She kept saying something about "it says March 17" which was the date of the previous flight. Not sure what the phone support person did, but she printed a boarding pass a few minutes later and said it was something about the upgrade from the previous day putting a hold on the check in.

I was a little concerned about an IRROPS situation with the weather in NYC this week but never needed to call on that.

javabytes

Glad to hear it. I missed this thread first time around... LBJ, Bagels, and Seawolf have it wrong.

If you book:
AAA-BBB on 1/1
BBB-AAA on 1/4
AAA-BBB on 2/15
BBB-AAA on 2/18

...all on a single reservation, it is simply impossible for you to be in violation of fare rules. All of your travel is on one reservation for the system to evaluate minimum stays, combinability, etc. to price the ticket. You have represented your travel plans exactly as you intended to fly them. I have done this countless times. And there is no need to worry about IROPS - since there is a separate fare component for each portion of the trip, the airline is responsible to transport you from AAA to BBB and back to AAA 2 times over.

If you were to split this into two reservations:
AAA-BBB on 1/1
BBB-AAA on 2/18
and
BBB-AAA on 1/4
AAA-BBB on 2/15

This could be considered a booking ploy if it helped you circumvent minimum stay restrictions for cheaper fares. But by definition, back-to-back ticketing requires multiple reservations.

orca15

Nice job, OP! I would have never of thought of trying this. Score!

Kevin AA

Apparently the Delta computer is pricing the first and last legs as one roundtrip (which is really cheap) and pricing the second and third legs as another roundtrip and then adding them together. If you look at the fare construction you will be able to figure it out (or post it and we can do it for you).

The way it works is the computer will search through all the fares and fare rules and produce the one that is the cheapest. It's basically the same thing as back-to-back ticketing, but because you have it on one ticket, it's not back-to-back ticketing (since that requires more than one ticket purchased). It is up to Delta to price it "correctly", which would require the computer to look at the fare rules and the entire itinerary, and then deny itself the ability to give you that fare. But good catch nevertheless.

xliioper

If you look at the fare rules on a number of the cheap X/V RT fares, you will see that some fares have "SIDE TRIPS PERMITTED", while others say "SIDE TRIPS NOT PERMITTED" . XNA-LGA and MKE-LGA are a couple of examples where they are permitted, while PIT-LGA and CMH-LGA are a couple of examples where they are not. So, in the PIT-LGA and CMH-LGA cases, the fares will not combine in a single ticket and you need to book them separately to get the lower pricing. In other words, don't expect this to work universally on cheap X/V RT fares.

On another note, DL now has $226 one-way T fares on XNA-LGA. So while there are still some savings to be had using this trick, they are not quite as dramatic as before.

ATOBTTR

Yea, I'm not going to read the T&Cs of the fare conditions to know what the airline considers permitted or not in that scenario.I'm simply going to the website to book and how it prices out on the website is what I'll pay. It's really up to Delta to price its stuff correctly. Not my job to figure out if it's priced correctly or not at the review screen.

I'm just curious - what happens in this scenario? I live in AAA. I get a two week business trip to BBB. Business books ticket:
June 5: AAA-BBB
June 16: BBB-AAA
Sometime after booking that ticket, I realize there's something I want/need to come home for on the weekend in between (June 9-11). Not business related but personal. So I book BBB-AAA for Friday night and AAA-BBB return for Sunday. Are you saying what I would need to do, rather than that, is call the airline, pay change fees and pay fare differences on the original ticket to rebook it as AAA-BBB-AAA for June 5-9 and then AAA-BBB-AAA for June 11-16? Seems asinine to me.

And yea, the scenario above is actually quite common in my world with extended military training where we're gone for a couple months at a time, especially if there's a holiday weekend. And this question gets really complicated because for the trip the gov't pays for (initial outbound and initial return) to get us to our business location, there are usually contract fares. But we can't use those fares to travel to/from locations for personal travel. What's your solution for that - both for gov't and non-gov't travelers?

jrl767

in 17 years' worth of personal weekend travel while on my 2-week Reserve summer tours, this is exactly right: you don't touch the original itinerary, and you pay ONLY for the flights on the in-between weekend

I don't want to derail this thread with a discussion of accounting for locations on USAF travel vouchers, because that's another story entirely

xliioper

Not really talking about T&C's, but rather the fare rules. For fares where side trips are permitted, the multi-city search will automatically combine the cheapest RT fares as nested fares. Where the fares do not permit side trips, it will refuse to nest the cheapest fares as a single ticket and the only way to get the cheapest fares is to book them separately as two separate tickets.

Christefan

Agree. Let's hope that all segments operate as planned. If Delta has to rebook OP due to some issues, this will be interesting. Also if OP tries to do SDC and the ticket has to be reissued, not sure what will happen.

exwannabe

No, you misunderstand.

In fare rules "side trips" means taking another fare and tacking it onto the same ticket as a single fare.

IE:

If a fare is A-B-A and you want to tack on B-C-B, that would be a side trip. If allowed, Expedia or such could issue a single ticket, A-B-C-B-A for the combined price of the two separate fares.

You should never have a need to know fare construction rules. If somebody sells it to you, it is fine.

This has nothing to do with an individual buying another ticket that interleaves the first ticket. That is fine (unless it is an attempt to violate the nested tickets rules in the COC, which is a completely separate issue).

EDIT: In your example, it you did this with an intent to violate a minimum stay restriction, then yes, you violated the COC. But that is not what LBJ was discussing.

bmw303

looks like Delta closed the loophole.


"Travel from one origin city to the same destination is not allowed more than once on the same ticket. Please book the trips separately or call Delta Reservations Sales at 800-221-1212. #1031R "