Hi All,

My first post here, have been reading for years now and have already picked up tons of useful info. If this isn't the right forum, apologies...

I'm looking at a part-MR, part pleasure trip taking advantage of two transcon hops. As I'm based in DUB, CO and UA have good fares to most US airports. Likewise, they have good fares from US airports to NRT.

I can get a reasonable fare in S on CO's own site, for DUB-IAH-DUB and IAH-NRT-IAH. I'll want a few days in IAH, but would rather them all on the one end, rather than a two days on the way out and two on the return, giving me a buffer if things get delayed.

If I price this as a 3-stop (or even 4-stop, with a 1 day layover on return) then CO's booking engine will only give full fare Y, which is expensive.

Would a travel agent be able to get me the S fare on both? From what I can see, nesting in this way is not backtracking, so should be ok with CO... but advice would be appreciated, as the 20k+ miles (without any routing tricks yet!) I'd rather not lose.

Also, while I'm not new to the FF game it will be my first time with US carriers - posting to either BD or OZ. I take it nobody's ever had any problems here - S gives 100% credit on both according to their websites...

Thanks!

CO don't publish any fares DUB-TYO, I would guess because they don't see a market for them.

The S fares (DUB-HOU-DUB & HOU-TYO-HOU) are not combinable on the same ticket, but there's nothing to stop you buying two separate tickets. Only two caveats:

- you may not be able to check bags all the way through (e.g. TYO-DUB via HOU and EWR) if using separate tickets
- you may not be protected if, say, you were connecting at HOU and the inbound flight were late, causing you to misconnect.

So, build in a safety buffer if you're planning to connect directly through HOU without a stopover.

hth