Bypassing the Saturday night stay penalty?
 

I've got two short trips coming up to London, and neither has a Saturday night stay. BOS-LHR-BOS in October, and then the same in January. They come out to between $2000 and $3000 each.

But I've noticed if I book BOS-LHR (outbound in October) - BOS (return in January) and separately LHR-BOS (return in October) - LHR (outbound in January), it comes out to less than $1500 in total, since each trip now has a Saturday night stay.

Am I missing something here - are there downsides to doing this?

this is technically illegal nested ticketing. the chance that you get called out for it is low, but the potential penalty is high...up to and including the closure of your DL account and forfeiture of your status/miles. only you can decide if it's worth the risk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airlin...back_ticketing

This is called back-to-back ticketing and is a booking practice that is forbidden by many airlines, including Delta.

https://www.delta.com/content/www/en...trictions.html

While it is seldom enforced, Delta reserves the right to:

I have always felt that THIS <above> type of remark scares people, as if they're going to be arrested, or something.

Also, actually, nested tickets are OK. <Which this is not>.

Nested is AAA--->BBB and while you're in city BBB, you travel to city CCC on a separate ticket, then return to city BBB, then back home to AAA on the first ticket.

I think the following is a better description of back-to-back ticketing.

Book each ticket on separate carriers and you'll avoid the potential problems pointed out by the other responses.

The easiest way to avoid any problems at all is to use Delta for one ticket and another airline for the other ticket. Then, even though you have back-to-back tickets, since they are on different airlines it won't be an issue. Just don't make one with DL and one with KL or VS - since they are partners, you might run into the issues mentioned above.

Are there any documented cases where Delta has "penalized" a SkyMiles member for buying tickets that are freely offered for sale on their web-site?

People on FT talk about how against the rules this is, but as far as I can see there is no limitation on nested ticketing, just back to back ticketing? Here's a scenario that I'll be doing next month:


JFK-SFO on Tuesday on Ticket A
SFO-SEA on Friday on Ticket B
SEA-SFO on Sunday on Ticket C
2h 'layover'
SFO-JFK on Sunday on Ticket A

I did this because I am going to SF for work from Tuesday to Friday, and I wanted to vacation up to Seattle for the weekend (to see UW-UCLA!). I don't think this breaks the rules?

That's nested ticketing. No issues there. Issue would be if you bought ticket B to go back to JFK to get around a Saturday night stay requirement on ticket A.

Actually, I dare say if you were to book one through DL and one directly through VS, you would probably be fine. It's not on you to account for Delta's myriad partnerships. You're meeting the letter of the rules.

Same here, since there is no law that says you can't do this. It may be against the airlines COC but it isn't illegal.

As I have pointed out many times here, something doesn't have to be against the laws of the government to be illegal. Goaltending in basketball is illegal.

I woud say it isn´t illegal per se. You can actually do it legally, but you have to use the return flights of course. So it would make sense to check if you have to fly BOS-LHR-BOS in the near future again and plan the tickets accordingly.

What about pricing it as follows:

one way BOS-LHR in October...then
roundtrip LHR-BOS-LHR (October-January)...then
one way LHR-BOS in January

don't think that violates anything and you still may see some of the savings.

This is perfectly legal.