BryanIAH

A few of the PIT G fares are back for travel to/from California. Routing rules allow 4 segments each way. Valid through 5/31/11. There is a ton of availability from 4/15-5/14 on most days of the week but more limited availability (Tues/Wed/Sat) from 5/15-5/31. Book on CO.com, UA.com, Kayak.

A similar fare is available through EOS for $40 extra per RT.

hiyo

Got one in May, thanks, OP.
Out Monday night 930ish on CO SAN-EWR-PIT-EWR-SAN, home by 2:00 in the afternoon Tuesday.
$200.80 a/i - 5478 EQM - $.037cpm.

pfxlax

Folks, sorry for the rookie question, but how do you assign the segments?

Thanks in advance.

BryanIAH

Select "Multiple Destinations" when booking your reservation. You can search availability through ITA but you'll need to book somewhere else. Continental.com is usually the easiest for these fares.

pfxlax

Thanks Bryan! As always the help is appreciated.^^

jasonvr

Excellent! Thank you. Snagged SNA-EWR-PIT-EWR-SFO-SNA for $206 ai on co.com (actually priced out cheaper on co.com than it showed in ITA which was $210). And I leave on a Friday evening and get back Saturday evening = no missed work! 3.17cpm

o mikros

The difference in fare of $5 is because if you arrive into an airport and leave immediately, the carrier can count the whole thing as one itinerary instead of two separate legs (which is how ITA calculates it). Then certain taxes and fees which normally are a per booking or per segment get reduced and you end up paying less. In fact, on your booking, it may show your flights as:

"....EWR - PIT COXXXX ?:?? arrive at ?:??

layover in PIT for ?:??

PIT - EWR COXXXX ?:?? arrive...."

So your stay in PIT counts as a layover instead of an endpoint/destination.

Disclaimer: this does not work for all flights or all carriers, and I can't sort out an exact correlation between any variables and the extra fees being charged or not.

Good job on finding; I'll be doing a PIT-IAD-SFO-LAX-CLD r/t for $216 for over 7500 EQM!

jasonvr

nice, thanks for the explanation. I'll have to look ast my itinerary. I tried to eek out a little more mileage but couldn't git another segment in without exploding the fare. I end up at ~6500 eqm

ba739

Just booked a trip from SNA - EWR - PIT on May 6 returning May 8 for $218..Thanks

BryanIAH

PIT-PHX is back too!

zmaniacz

SMF-ORD-PIT-IAD-SMF, $240 ai. All same day on a Sunday.

Not ideal in terms of cpm, but lets me finish my status challenge without missing anything important, so I'll take it.

Thanks!

fzwinter

Similar fares now available to other US hubs (CLT, PHL) from SMF. Likely other west coast cities would also work. Noticed SMF-SFO-PHL-SFO-SMF (same day trip) for $220 ai, >6K EQMs. A319 on both the long flights, though, so chances of UDU aren't so great.

mechteach

A belated thanks for the heads-up on this, btw! I had a trip to NRT cancelled (no surprise), and so picked up 3 of these to make up the mileage deficit. I didn't maximize the miles, as I'm only getting around 5700 eqm out of each trip, but that does mean I can leave PIT in the morning, and be back the same day in the evening, which is perfect.

fzwinter

Now that they're not permitting the ultra-cheap fare buckets for segment padding, I think 5700 EQMs per trip is pretty good.

Just noticed that PHL is no longer a cheap option from SMF but PIT and CLT still are.

o mikros

It's not bad, but I have a PIT-CLD with three connections resulting in over 7500 EQM r/t. Admittedly, it's not an all-in-one-day trip as I get back around 10 the next morning after leaving at 6 am the day before.