baccarat0809

Been there, done that - never had a problem with it.

They're ok with

aaa-bbb
bbb-ccc
ccc-bbb
bbb-aaa


what they don't want is

aaa-bbb round trip #1
bbb-aaa start of r/t #2
aaa-bbb end of r/t #2
bbb-aaa end of round trip #1

And even then you shouldn't have a problem as long as you don't constantly do it. RPU may look into it if you do it 100 times but once off shouldn't be a problem.

vasantn

The nesting that you are proposing is not prohibited by the rules, but if the computer sees that you have two trips reserved with no possible way of taking both of them, the chances are pretty good that one of them will be cancelled. Now if you had enough of a cushion at both ends it would not be a problem.

I think the OP is looking at:

aaa-bbb
aaa-ccc
ccc-aaa
bbb-aaa

with the intention that he will either skip the bbb trip or the ccc trip. But perhaps I have misunderstood.

AKC6

+1 what vasantn wrote--no back-to-back trips.

Also, if the inside trip is a walk-up fare, I don't think anyone cares; they haven't lost any $.

To be absolutely safe, book another airline and check out the competition.

clacko

if the family event is in sea, & the work trip is to bbb for 12 days & the fare rules require a sat nite stay, it violates the rules.... & is the classic example of which did a bunch in the early 80's...

this may be the case...

so, read the rules for the 1st ticket....

i wonder if an award ticket would also be a no no?

exwannabe

Delta might "catch" a grievous case where a person is commuting A<>B and buys interleaved tickets to always have a sat night stay.

They are not going to jump on the OP (who I assume is flying B<>A within A<>B).

And if they did, the OP could just tell the truth and be scolded is all.

baccarat0809

Guys, while I never read the fine print, I flew on five nested trips over an eight year period at my last employer. I am Buffalo based and my mom has a condo in Fort Myers. I would book trips to see my mom and have some fun in the sun. Well, as my work required that I travel to see clients and prospective clients, sometimes at a moments notice, I would have to leave vacation for a day or so to take care of the client matters. As such, I had the following:

BUF-RSW (Personal Ticket)
RSW-XXX (Where XXX was CLT, PHL, LAX, BDL and DFW if I recall correctly)
XXX-RSW (Return of work ticket)
RSW-BUF (Return of Personal Ticket)

I would book the BUF-RSW-BUF ticket months in advance to get a better price (usually a sLUT fare). Work would dictate me leaving within the vacation for the client visit, which normally took a day or so, then I was free to return back to vacation. While some here will think I'm crazy for leaving vacation and that's an entirely different matter for a different thread ~ please understand that I was well taken care of for my willingness to alter my plans.

What mother delta doesn't want is

BUF-RSW (Outbound of Personal ticket #1)
RSW-BUF (Outbound of Work ticket #2 having me return to the office)
BUF-RSW (Return Trip of Work ticket #2 back to vacation)
RSW-BUF (Return of Personal ticket #1)

The reason they don't want that is to skirt around the "Saturday night" overstay requirement. Look at the following example:

BUF-RSW (Outbound of Personal Ticket #1 on Tuesday 10/18/2011)
RSW-BUF (Outbound of Work Ticket #2 on Friday 10/21/2011)

Spend the weekend back in Buffalo.

BUF-RSW (Return of Work Ticket #2 on Monday 10/24/2011)
RSW-BUF (Return of Personal Ticket #1 on 10/27/2011)

I was told that RPU will pick-up a ticket that avoids a Saturday night stay by looking at 2 criteria. 1st criteria used is of course your skymiles #. The second criteria they use is the credit card that was used to pay for the trip.

Hope this helps explain things and that's what you were looking for/at OP.

tikiboy

Thanks.
What I am looking at is Sea-Atl (work ticket) leaving on Nov 7 and returning 2
Fridays Nov 18.
I may need to fly Atl-JFK (personal ticket) Nov-12 returning Nov 13. I won't know if I will buy that ticket until Nov 9 or Nov 10.
When I asked the DM line, they said I would have to change my ticket so it was all on one itinerary. This would make it hard for client reimbursement.

clacko

if if isn't allowed by the fare rules, it isn't "legal".....doing a ticket to/from pdx for example wouldn't be a problem, or if the event is somewhere other than sea....so read the fare rules....good luck...

SamuelS

If you use multi-city on delta.dumb, you can often book "nested" back to back tickets all in the same itinerary, and they price up all at the lowest fare bucket applicable.

If I can book it and ticket it on delta.dumb as one of the offered total itinerary options, I would not expect anyone at Delta to come after me. If their own website allows it, how am I, a humble layperson, expected to know that what delta.dumb is offering is not allowed per some archaic ticketing rules.

baccarat0809

While I can't claim that you will have zero problems, I can tell you with certainty that I have done this multiple times and I know people here who have done this. The only thing I would suggest is book that work ticket first prior to booking your personal trip. There's nothing in any ticketing that says you HAVE to stay in the same city you've gone to.

baccarat0809

Only problem is he's looking for client re-imbursement and that's not going to work getting this all on 1 ticket. If you did multi-city on delta it's not considered a "nested" ticket.

DesertNomad

I think it depends on the time span. I am from RNO but live in PRG so one summer when a family member passed away (and I had to sell a house) I did:

PRG-RNO (Tkt 1) (May)

RNO-PRG (Tkt 2) (July) Returned home to Prague to deal with a few things.
PRG-RNO (Tkt 2) (July)

RNO-PRG (Tkt 1) (September)

Nobody said anything about it.

justflyingin

I don't get the problem. My DH is on a 2 month long trip to the US with about 15 legs all booked as one ticket on Delta.

After we booked it, we discovered that he needed to go one more place from PHX which is where he had originally planned to be for 3 weeks. So, we bought another ticket (this time a r/t) on delta.com up to the place he needed to go (CO) and he flew back to PHX before he continued on his original journey.

Why should there be a problem? He is still going on his original flight as purchased--he is just adding another flight in there. They should be happy and not cancel his original booking. That would really upset us and it would make no sense if all of a sudden Delta decided to cancel his original ticket (15 legs) because he decided to add another r/t ticket in the middle. And I can't see any legal reason they'd have the right to.

We aren't trying to "get away with anything" and I don't see the problem. It was all done on delta.com and nothing has gotten canceled. He has only about 6 legs left of his original journey and so far everything has come up fine on his SM account.

flymonthly

Look at booking your work trip as two one-ways. Chances are that it wouldn't be any more expensive than a round-trip since the airlines have eliminated use of "excursion" type fares for many (most?) domestic itineraries.

KenfromDE

Remember the advice "If you don't think the answer is correct call again." My guess is the agent misunderstood. While spending 2 months in HNL, I took a separate trip to Asia with no question or problem..