Back To Back Ticketing
 

Is back to back ticketing illegal ?

Has any ff ever been quoted any term and condition in the airlines terms and conditions or conditions of carriage that preclude this ?

Any ff been denied boarding because of this.

Any help or advice appreciated ?

Thanks

Back to back ticketing is against airline rules. It is not "illegal".

The most common penalty that I know of is confiscation of all frequent flier points and/or status with the airline.

The common risk is to be denied boarding altogether. You then get into a lot more trouble than it's worth. Also, if you lose your status you could struggle to get into the program again (that really depends on who's handling the case and which airline - it has been handled in the past in very different ways).

If you are really desperate, book on two separate airlines and use two credit cards - it's almost impossible to track (and for the real paranoid). There might be more info if you do a search.

You can do "pseudo" back to backs and it is very difficult or impossible to track. For instance, on ridiculously expensive routes, you can book on 2 different airlines (try to use ones that have different reservations systems, UA-Apollo, AA-Sabre). Throw away the return part of the ticket and in many cases you can fly two or three people for the price of a single flight during midweek.

Be careful though if you travel on business and change plans often. The tickets may have more restrictions but usually with paying the change penalty you still save $$$.

The risk seems to be where the software (or an alert gate rep) picks up the fact that you are mixing segments from different tickets - where you're travelling on one ticket before a previous ticket is finished. I've also seen people get caught when they hand over the wrong ticket to the rep.

There is a better way, if you are going to be making a number of trips (i.e., we have to travel regularly for biweekly project meetings). Buy a one-way outbound, then buy your round trips using your "destination" city as your "home" city instead. This will make each ticket a Saturday night stay ticket, but you will not be mixing tickets. Once the sequence is done, you buy the last ticket as another one-way.