If the airlines ran Mcdonalds---Next time you order an extra value meal and decided you did not want to eat all of the fries or finsh the soda pop, you would be told since you did not eat all of your meal, you are not entitiled to the discount given on the extra value meal. Therefore, your meal should be calculated at the ala carte price and you need to pay the higher cost of each of the individual items added together.

Hi!

I have a question about the "nested" ticket.
If:

I fly HKG->DTW in one summer (ticketed in HKG)

then every summer and christams I fly
DTW->HKG->DTW for 3 years (Ticketed US)

sometimes fly between states in this 3 years

finally fly DTW->HKG in the final summer (ticket US)

Will I considered as "nested" or illegal? I am afraid they kill my miles of 3 years.

Both your trips are legal (I am a travel agent) and neither of them are back to back tickets. Below is an example of a back to back ticket.

Lax / Lon 14 Jun
Lon / Lax 13 Sept ticket 1

Lon / Lax 16 Jun
Lax / Lon 15 Sept ticket 2

The reason people purchase back to backs most of the time is because they are not staying in their destination long enough to get a discounted fare. In most cases a Saturday night. If someone would purchase a ticket going to NYC on a monday and return on a tueseday it would be over a 1000.00 in most cases, but if they go to NYC often they will purchase 2 trips and make it apear that they are staying over a saturday night. Travel agents have been using this for many years ( even though it is not legal ) A few years ago the airlines decided to pursue passengers. If you book it on 2 different airlines in most cases it is untraceable. But in your case you are legal.... I have many times ticketed clients 2 one way tickets instead of 1. This is normally only cheaper when you are dealing with international fares. Hold on to that Travel Agent, because it is hard to find good agents that will research many options. One thing I want to make sure is that you are ticketing 3 tickets not 2 ? Is this correct. If you were doing 2 round trip tickets it would be a back to back ticket..... In case number 2 that is also totally legal... Lots of times people are sent on busniness on 1 ticket and then go home to see their family in the middle of a trip.

Thanks so very much for the reply, lv2tvl! It's nice to have it from a professional stand-point.

Question for lv2tvl. I was a bit confused about the back-to-back question. Here's what we did for step-son to fly here for the summer. Is this considered back-to-back & illegal?

Stepson is leaving ict on 5/28 & staying in atl until 8/19.

We bought 2 round trip tickets:

5/28 ict to atl
6/10 atl to ict

&

8/19 atl to ict
9/10 ict to atl

I'm confused.

The 5/28 ict to atl and 8/19 atl-ict are fine, but the 6/10 atl-ict and 9/10 ict-atl don't seem to nest. Shouldn't the second ict-atl fall between 6/10 and 8/19?

These tkts are perfectly kosher, because they are being used in succession. You are finishing one before starting the other.

If you had:

5/28 AAA - BBB 8/31 BBB-AAA

along with

5/29 BBB - AAA 8/30 AAA-BBB

this would be back to back, because you are starting tkt 2 before you finish tkt 1.

Even if they are back to back, if the flights would meet the fare rules, anyway, then you are usually OK. It's only when you do two quick turnarounds, far apart, that the airlines get shirty.

Stepson is only going to use the 1st half of each round trip ticket. He is leaving wichita on 5/28 & staying in atl until 8/19. We bought 2 round trip tickets because it was cheaper to do this & throw the other half away instead of buying 1 ticket for a 90 day stay. The round trip fare we choose had to have a 30 day or less stay, which is why we chose the dates of 6/10 & 9/10.