FlyerTalker70

Just came across this while doing some research for an upcoming milage run:



Apparently the best way to get from Fort Lauderdale to Miami is via O'Hare?

Would be curious to hear from fellow FTers if there are any other types of domestic origin/destination pairs that are geographically near each other but require you to go transcontinental to make the flight (if the price was lower arguably this could make a great MR). I'd be curious to see how Gate Agent/airport employee would react to such an itinerary.

Safe Travels,

James

klanfa

I don't think the fare quoted there is filed directly as "FLL-MIA fare". Google Flight quotes the price as a combination of individually filed fares (as confirmed on ITA Matrix: http://prntscr.com/i3dhge). Hence there's no savings vs multiple tickets/regular mileage run - the same price is quoted.

CMK10

In the old days it didn't cost anything extra on AA to fly LGA-BOS-JFK-XXX. I did it twice, LGA-BOS-JFK-LAX and LGA-BOS-JFK-PHX. And as that was when you got 1,000 RDMs as a Platinum per segment as long as you weren't doing anything important that morning it was a great way to earn segments and RDMs.

Duke787

One time it cost me an extra $50 to do DCA - DFW - LIM - MIA - ORD - DCA instead of just DCA - ORD - DCA when booking last minute ($500 vs. $550). I had to be in ORD for something and was consulting at the time so I happily paid the extra $50 and just worked from the hotel in Lima on Friday (and I was an EXP so the SWU to the old 763 J seats helped make it doable).

I think when I looked at the fare rules it was because DCA - LIM allowed a free stopover on the way home (which I used at ORD since that's where I actually needed to be) and the DCA - ORD fare was only available in expensive fare buckets.

wh6cto

A couple years ago, I had to do WAS-YYZ for work, and prices on UA/AC were ridiculous, at least on the outbound.

Found it was 25% cheaper to do: BWI-EWR-MCO-CLE-YYZ, obviously a combination of BWI-MCO + MCO-YYZ fares. Mileage increased nearly tenfold, from 250PQM to 2458PQM. Even got upgraded on EWR-MCO-CLE. Can't complain.

With close-in booking, when prices are typically inflated, it's often worth looking for an intermediate point which increases miles without increasing the price.

FlyerTalker70

For the screenshot above I had to "fool" Google Flights to show me those fares by limiting the search by airline (i.e. it hid those automatically). I suspect thought that the itinerary I listed is slightly different than the one you presented. Namely, the outbound combines fare 1 & 2 and the return leg combines fare 3 & 4. Hence, while it may be the same price as what you quoted, it is at least in theory protected in the event of a misconnect. On a side note, I'd love to see the look on the transfer agents face in ORD when you misconnect and they look through the file. I would think there would be a story or two to share on FT ;-)

In any event the fare listed is bookable on AA so it is a valid fare in the eyes of the airline.

xliioper

As you noted, this is just broken fare combination of multiple fares as AA has no published fares between MIA and FLL. More accurately, I would call it a valid "ticket", rather than a valid "fare" since there are actually multiple fares involved. For awhile the legacies were heavily restricting end-on-end ticketing combinations for many of the lower fare classes and combining the above flights on a single ticket would have required much pricier fare classes that allowed for end-on-end combinations. They later relented for many of the fare classes, but still have the restrictions on the very cheapest ones. For example, the $85 CLE-FLL basic economy fares have them and only allow combinations that are simple roundtrips -- "IF THE FARE IS USED END-ON-END MUST BE AN A-B-A COMBINATION. "