I need to fly OMA-ATL which Delta flies direct for a cool $1k. This is for training so the cost is too steep.

I could book two tickets, one NW for the outbound and a direct Delta return and throw away the returns for each for about $500.

Are they working together closely enough to detect that? I would book the NW flight with my WP number and the Delta without (well, I might add the WP number at the counter

Too risky?

Personally, I wouldn't do it.

But if you did throwaway tickets like this, you don't have to book a RT. You can book each as an open jaw, with the throwaway flight(s) to/from some arbitrary city that brings down the fare.

I personally wouldn't do it myself either.

Any chance you can extend your travel to include a Saturday night?

I'm not sure what type of training this is and if it's for your employer, but since we're on the topic of ticketing, some employers do have rules (ethics policies) which prohibit an employee from doing back-to-back/throw-away ticketing, believe it or not.

As far as getting you to ATL:

Any low fare competition (i.e. AirTran.. or anyone who is in the ATL market) in OMA or from a city nearby which you could use for departure? Or is there a city with low fare competition in your region which you could fly to at a decent price to pick up a fare to ATL?

I'm not familiar with the OMA market -- do you have Frontier or any discounter by chance? (even if it meant flying to DEN and then going DEN-ATL?).. I'm not sure if Frontier publishes their fares via the normal channels, but if you do have a discount carrier, I would go directly to their website.

Last but not least, there are NW coupons for $100 off a flight of $400 or more. While it would only knock $100 off the base price, if you could locate such a coupon, it would at least lower the fare.

Just trying to provide a few suggestions...

Best,

SDF_Traveler

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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin

What are your travel dates? I looked up March 8-12 (Monday to Friday) on Expedia.com and came up with $229-$238 roundtrip on Continental, with plenty of flight choices via MEM, DTW, MSP or IAH.

March 28-April 2nd. The fare that you mentioned came up when I looked the first time about 10 days ago but alas it vanished for those dates. I need to be in ATL early in the morning so a Monday morning flight is out.

I just did a search, 3/28 - 4/2 return as you wanted and came up with $224.90 on Continental.

Coooool!!! Thanks!!

I am a bit confused as to why some posters would NOT do the throwaway ticket thing? Especially when on different airlines.

Personally, I would have no problem doing it on one airline. If you are concerned, you might make the return for well into the future.

You might also want to do a search on throw away or back to back or something like that. This has been discussed quite a bit.

I booked the $224 fare with perfect connection times.

The flight is ticketed via CO (T-class) but fully operated on NW metal. Because I am flying NW metal, will I get 100% EQM miles? And, do I checkin at the NW counter both times?

The exact same itin priced via nwa.com was north of $800. Expedia could display the fare but would reprice to >$600 once I tried to purchase it.

The real kicker is once I reserved my seats on continental.com, I got 5B aisle all the way through. Somehow the premier sections were not all the way blocked out. What's going on? I have status with neither CO nor NW.

[This message has been edited by michaelr (edited Feb 14, 2004).]

If your flights are operated by NW, you would check-in directly with Northwest.

You should get 100% EQM on NW metal as the 50% EQM applies to CO metal flights. I would keep your NW boarding passes just in case you have any problems afterwards.

As far as expedia repricing fares, I've seen that happen a few times lately where one higher price will be displayed but when you go to purchase, it's re-priced to something lower. Lately I've also found some lower airfares via Expedia than the nwa.com site and when that happens, I'll gladly pay the $5 booking fee to expedia.

Last but not least, it sounds like you got lucky with your seating - I presume you're booked on a DC-9 for all segments with 5B seating?

Best,

SDF_Traveler

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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin

That's correct. It's DC-9 on three segments. However, I spoke to fast, the seat assignment does not seem to take. I can select the seat and it updates the page but when I close the browser and return, the old row 20 assignment pops up again.

What happens is Expedia.com sends the seat assignment request to NW, and NW rejects it because you don't have status. You don't have to close the browser, just refresh it after NW has received and then rejected the request (a few seconds?).

Normally those seats are blocked out, but sometimes things get screwed up. In any event, not surprisingly, the airline has the final say on the seat assignment, not the travel agent.

[This message has been edited by JS (edited Feb 14, 2004).]

back to backs work very well....got a tight date schedule and need to go to detroit from chicago? get 2 of those 78 ers

1: ord-dtw may 7 dtw ord may 27pm
2: dtw-ord may 9 ord dtw may 27 am

save a ton of money, skip this saturday nite crap and get a nice little daytrip to the windy city...just be sure to put those trip one segments on nw frequent flier and put #2 on any of the other members of the Deathstar Alliance (co, ak, dl)