Despite all the ranting & flaming ... what the OP needs to consider: if the "A" fare contains any kind of minimum-stay language, then I'd be looking for someplace other than PHL for the "B" legs.

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So if he booked one PHL-MUC, and another using say BWI, ABE, or EWR, he'd be OK then, according to the letter of the rule?

That is end-on-end ticketing, which is usually okay by the rules.

He could either fly one PHL-MUC-PHL and the other MUC-BWI/ABE/EWR-MUC. Or he could do PHL-MUC-PHL and FRA-PHL-MUC or something similar so that the open end is in Europe (but harder to make a same-day turnaround in Europe if the latter option).

Back-to-back ticket/nested ticket - the terminology might be different but the end result is the same - to circumvent minimum stay requirements. As was mentioned earlier, Delta is very advanced in catching this. I know of a person who did this for flights within the US and Delta charged him the fare difference which ended up being over $1,000.

John

Back-to-back ticketing IS nested ticketing with return to origin.
I would not be so sure that just returning to another US airport would get the OP off-the-hook. Difficult to say that returning to, say, WAS rather than PHL is not avoiding a sat night stay restriction.
Like Beckles, I would personally not try it with DL. Too risky. Would be OK if you flew the other ticket with another airline and credited to another FFP, but you increase the risk by flying the same airline and crediting it all to their FFP and double the risk if that airline is DL.

Right, flying A-B-A, then B-C-B within that itinerary is "nested" ticketing, and not against the rules. If C=A, then that is back-to-back ticketing, a special case of nested ticketing that is against the rules. Whether you get caught, of course, is a different question.

I am intrigued by the question of whether non-co-terminal but close-by cities, like BWI and PHL, counts as back-to-back ticketing. It obviously violates the spirit of the rule, but probably not the letter. Of course, if it were against the rules, where would one draw the line? Would MUC-BWI-MUC within PHL-MUC-PHL not be allowed but MUC-DEN-MUC within PHL-MUC-PHL be allowed? I would doubt that they would catch that and punish you for it.

I'd be curious to see if they allow that, and would be curious to see what happens to the OP if he/she is the guinea pig!

DL defines back-to-back itcketing in its CoC rather widely asThis is wide enough to cover not only back-to-back ticketing in the strict sense but also a return to another point, where the purpose is to avoid minimum stay requirements.

I understand the logic behind prohibiting back-to-back ticketing, but the airline is shooting itself in the leg. I once bought a DL ticket SFO-ATL-SFO for a long-term stay in ATL. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I had to return to SFO at some point for a couple of days. I had the option of changing the return flight, with a significant penalty, and buying a new round-trip ticket for the remainder of the ATL gig, or the option of keeping the original ticket as is and buying a nested ticket ATL-SFO-ATL. The latter option was of course cheaper, so I bought such a ticket. And due to DL's prohibition, they lost the potential revenue: I bought and flew UA instead.

So your unplanned return must have happened soon after the initial arrrival? Soon enough to be breaking the Sat night/x days stay requirement?

Cos if it didn't, then the nesting would surely be perfectly legal....:confused:

Nesting itself is fine.. just not to avoid those restrictions..... true???

Fly SFO-ATL.. you are there for 2 weeks of the planned three months (say) THEN you buy the new ATL-SFO-ATL ticket becuase you find you need a quick SFO visit...... Where's the problem? That should be perfectly legal?????

P.S. Ranting and flaming? I can see some folks firmly warning the OP that he might end up $$$$ out of pocket.. that's all......

I agree with you, trooper, but that was a business trip and bookings are made by my company's travel department. They do not care to evaluate every time if a nested trip will violate any rule, so they implicitly require that any nested trip be on a different airline. May be silly, but the point is that the airline that imposed the restriction lost the opportunity for revenue of the inner ticket.

I think I have found the solution to this problem. I can book the same low airfare departing on Saturday (arriving sunday) and then return on the flight back on Sunday.

I am going to post in the DL forum about the connection time in MUC. The arriving flight gets in at 7:55AM and the return departs at 10:00AM. 2 hours in MUC to clear customs, check-in again and get back to the gate. Anyone here know if that's possible?