The Flying Detective - what did he mean?
 

That Flying Detective guy or whatever his name was, had wrote something in his book, of which I couldn't grasp the concept.

Its becoming an issue now. I want to make each flight count the most, flying out of my way to get as many miles as possible.

It had something to do with being able to squeeze numerous extra flights into your itinerary, as long the miles in any one flight leg didn't exceed the miles from origin to final destination. In this way, the cost would not go up to add these extra legs. Is this right?

And, how does one find these extra legs to squeeze in between what would have been a non-stop or direct flight? I've read posts about manipulating the sites to allow lots of multi cities, but how do you even know which cities are on an airline's route to add to the list? Is there an OAG website?

Thanx.

quote:
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"...That Flying Detective guy..."
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(1) You certainly have me wondering who/what this is. You gotta a nice link or something.

(2) Almost every airport has a "use" fee so more stops, more dollas.

(3) Airlines are only obligated to get you from point-to-point and will often (legally) reroute you without your express permission. Do a search on the Delta forum for some tales.

(4) In these weird multi-stopping flight trips, one missed connection will result in unbelievable rescheduling and reseating, usually into the middle seat between two very fat garlic-munching sumo wrestlers (or worse).

MisterNice

I believe you are refering to Peter Greenburg, "The Travel Detective." He has a recently published book, he is the travel guy on the Today Show, and he hosts a Sat. morning radio show.

With regard to your question, if you want to fly, say, on United from ORD to LAX, if the roundtrip fare is $300, you can either:

1) Go nonstop each way

or

2) Connect in as many cities as you want, often for the same price.

Example:

ORD-DSM-DEN-LAS-LAX
LAX-SNA-DEN-MSN-ORD

8 legs, $300.

[This message has been edited by zrs70 (edited 10-06-2001).]

So, in fact, all that this "detective" has discovered is a copy of the fare rules.

How clever.

Come visit the Mileage Run forum, where we discovered the fare rules years ago. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif