I booked one of the special WBC "Z" fares to Europe over Thanksgiving. These fares are only valid out of certain, mainly east coast, points of origin. I could not book this fare from my midwest point of origin and so booked a W fare to link to an eastcoast departure city that had this Z fare availability.

So, I now have two separate itins with separate confirmation numbers. One is W class from A to B and return 10 days later. The other is F & Z class from B to C stateside, and to D to E in Europe with return 10 days later. The Z itin is nested within the W itin.

The Z was booked online and the W was booked with the GE line, CSR being the only way to redeem the ECV that provides a fee RT in W.

Will I encounter problems with this due to rules about nested itineraries? Will I be able to check luggage all the way from A to E? I can call NW and ask but wanted to get someone's opinion before I call attention to my situation.

Let's hope not. That's what I did on the advice of the GE telephone agent!!!

I've done this before a couple of times. 99% of the time it is an accident because I have already scheduled a trip to/from my client and something comes up that I have to take a trip in between. I've called the plat line before and they've told me no problem, but then again I wasn't trying to get around any fare rules. They probably wouldn't be able to tell that after the fact anyway.

They have even checked my luggage all the way through for me, but I always make sure that the agent is in a good mood before I ask them to do that . A grumpy agent may give you a hard time or make your life miserable to match theirs and make you retreive and recheck. Just make sure you have enough padding in your schedule if that were to happen.

The only potential problem that you will have is if the first segment is delayed and causes you to miss your "connecting" flight. Since it's not a connection, they won't have to do much for you - you technically look like you no showed for your "original" flight. That happened to me very recently and I was lucky that it was domestic and there were lots of standby options.

This is a perfectly legal routing: it is called "end-on-end" ticketing.
http://www.travelterminal.com/glossary.shtml#end_on_end

There are numerous threads discussing this in both the MR forum and in the NW forum. ^

Plus they really don't care how you burn your miles as long as there is availability.

I booked a TPA-CVG MR last winter at time when the fare was available only from 3 cities in FL. In my case I booked it as a multi-city ticket inside a MSP-TPA RT.

Not to worry.

As long as you're not doing a throw-away deal, ie san-msp and an msp-san RT, and tossing both the returns away... it won't be a problem.