Back-to-back ticketing vs multi-city
 

After searching all over the internet, I can't seem to find an answer to my question. I hope someone here can help me out. I'm flying Continental round trip every other week. One round trip ticket is over $900 (they currently have a monopoly on this leg). Back to back ticketing is half the cost but prohibited by their contract of carriage.

It states "The use of Flight Coupons from two or more different Tickets issued at round trip fares for the purpose of circumventing applicable tariff rules (such as advance purchase/minimum stay requirements) commonly referred to as "Back-To-Back Ticketing" is prohibited by CO."

My question is if anyone knows if setting up two round trips in one multi-city ticket is allowed. It’s the same price as back to back ticketing but is only one ticket. Their contract specifically says two or more different tickets. Am I running the risk of having my trip cancelled by Continental this way?

Thanks!!

yes you are. There are several ppl on FT that have burned before.

are you saying that 2 tickets, a-b rt & b-c rt are cheaper than 1 ticket a-c rt connecting at b?....

does using multi city give you a price for 1 ticket that is the same as the 2 tickets?....

no minimum stay requirements are eluded?...''

i'm trying to envision your situation.....good luck....

edit to add.....if its non stop and you are using back to back the be there on alternate weeks, its still back to back.....

if there is an alternate airport close to your work place, perhaps you could use it for the middle trip, with the added inconvenience, but perhaps more mi's....

Ordinarily, back-to-back ticketing is disallowed by the airline, and may result in loss of any frequent flyer benefits, additional charges, and/or loss of rights to fly with them again (if they can't peg you with the first 2). If, by "multi-city ticketing", you mean what others refer to as end-on-end ticketing, then this is perfectly OK. End-on-end means that you buy multiple R/T tickets using an intermediate city or cities, but that all segments are flown in order.

Here's a good description of both types.

If you do back-to-back ticketing, use 2 different airlines (in different alliances if possible) for each RT. That way the first airline is not likely to catch or make fuss. It's probably not against their explicit rules (but I could be wrong), but I'd be discreet when discussing your reservations with these airlines (i.e. don't tell the first airline what you're doing).

As for "illegal", I doubt they're illegal, just against the rules. Big difference. ;)

@Clacko

There is no intermediate city. It is
A -> B
B -> A
A -> B
B -> A

It is straight from Continental's web site. If I book each trip round trip it will cost $2000 for both round trip tickets. If I book one multi city ticket (four flights total) its will cost $560.

@deubster

It is end on end, but going back and forth. I am not buying two round trip tickets that overlap. I am flying the entire ticket from begining to end.

@UA_Eagle
Continental is the only airline that has non stop between A and B. So I don't have a choice with whom I fly.

Thanks for the replys All!

If you are booking it as a single ticket on their site then it would be pretty hard for them to accuse you of violating the rules. After all, they built the rules engine there.

i would go with it.....i assume that the flights are in date sequence, so no prob...good luck...

If the CO web site let you do that then it should be good (although I wonder if they made a mistake in allowing this when they could have extorted more money out of you ;) ). But to be on the safe side, I'd print out the fare basis/rules for each flight and examine them closely to make sure you're not going to break their rules (even if the web site allow you to book this kind of ticket). Just being paranoid, I guess.

Good luck!

Freaky fare differences to be sure.

You should call just for fun and ask for it and see what they do when they see the differences.

I agree though, check the fare rules of each leg to be sure it's OK.

OMG I just randomly stumbled on this and am now freaking out!!

See, i'm a noob and I wanted to go to australia this summer, but living in Montreal, there's no way to get there directly, and the one YUL-YYZ-YVR-SYD ''Direct'' flight was sold out in economy, so I booked YUL-LAX rt and then LAX-SYD rt, but separately on air canada and Qantas and now this could be ''illegal''? And AC could just decide to cancel all my flights for me cause I didn't buy their stupid 12000$ first class trip thru TO and vancouver?

Please someone tell me I'm freaking out for nothing and read this all backwards?

Take a deep breath and RELAX!

There is nothing wrong with what you've done. You have two seperate trips on two different tickets and airlines. The OP was talkung about back to back return trips on the one multi-segment ticket. I say well done for being able to find a cheaper way to do things

Nested tickets flown in order are perfectly legal (at least as long as you're not backtracking to your origin[*]), even with the same airline; people use them all the time. Sometimes they'll even let you check bags through on different airlines[**].

What you don't get with those is any protection if there is a flight delay or cancellation - if your YUL-LAX flight is delayed or cancelled, you are out of luck for the change fees (or if everything is full, getting a seat at all!) on the LAX-SYD round trip... whereas if you'd booked a single YUL-SYD journey, the airline would have been responsible for alternate accomodations to Sydney.

The moral is simply to build in extra time to allow for delays, etc; on international trips, my usual rule of thumb is 8 hours or overnight.

[* A coworker got to work in Japan for several months, and had to come back for several days roughly each month. He flew out on a separate round trip SFO-NRT for 3-4 weeks each time, but one option he looked at was getting an unrestricted round trip ticket SFO-NRT, then flying back each time as a NRT-SFO round trip. I'm not sure that would have actually been any cheaper, but assuming it was, would that have been back-to-back?]

[** it's been a LONG while since I've done it but in the past I've had a few times to buy a SBA-SFO leg or round trip on UA to make it to an already-booked SFO-somewhere/usually-NYC AA trip, and they were able to check bags straight through.]

Hi and thanks,

The thing is YUL is on crappy airport that no airline wants to fly too, and as I said before, the only way to stay on the same plane the whole way was to do YUL-YYZ-YVR-SYD and that was all sold out in economy. Now I tried to get a decent fare on one ticket, but it was all at least 2 excessively tight connections (all less than 3 hours) all thru either ORD, DEN or LGA, then to LAX and then to SYD, and since I get (obviously) panic attacks very easily, I really didn't want to risk it, even if I could ''always get on another flight''.

I also have no idea how full the LAX-SYD flight on the A380 is, but I figured it just would be my luck that the next available flight would be 4 days later :/

Plus also, there's a 12 hours and 10:30 hours layover, so I'm somehow feeling better about it. The longest mechanical delay I've had when I was a kid travelling with my parents was something like 3 hours. Once, we got a 32 hours delay because of this epic snowstorm, but me thinks there isn't that many odds for that in the middle of july XD

LAX-SYD has a couple of flights daily (plus is reachable via AKL or MEL or SFO), although obviously availability and willingness of any given airline to interline will vary.

Yeah, 12 hours should be more than fine, into well-under-1% odds territory of any kind of delay that long on the way out, especially since the customs delay will be before you leave Canada.

10:30 hours coming back, given that you're looking at as much as 2 hours for immigration/customs in LA, is still fairly safe... and you're also dealing with the shorter (and probably-cheaper-to-change) leg in that direction if something does go wrong.

I've gotten some huge delays because of weather at various times of year - summer storms coming out of Indianapolis the only time I ever flew out of there delayed me something like 8 hours. In the worst case, just make sure you have the phone # for the other airline and your record locator handy and call as early as possible when you find out you're likely to or going to miss your connection.