the meaning of "transfers"
 

Is there a travel agent out there who can clarify what "transfers" means?

Specifically, the rules on a fare read
"4 TRANSFERS PERMITTED. -SURFACE SEGMENTS NOT PERMITTED."

The other relevant part is "NO ENROUTE STOPOVERS PERMITTED. A STOPOVER OCCURS WHEN THE PASSENGER DOES NOT DEPART AN INTERMEDIATE POINT WITHIN 4 HOURS."

Given these rules, what limitations do I have when I choose to beef up a flight with additional segments?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Translation: for a round trip you may have a maximum of six segments (four transfers plus outward destination). You can stop for a maximum of four hours in each place other than your outward destination.

HOWEVER, these fares can usually be combined to make a circle trip, which is fared out by adding half the round-trip fare for each of the three city pairs. In that case you could likely have three more segments.

Also, the four-hour restriction usually doesn't apply if the next legal connection is longer than four hours away. This is a sneaky way to get overnights in.

Thanks for the info, Lion! With that in mind, what rules apply to routing? What is to stop me from going

SJC-LAX-ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD-IYK

Can anyone shed some light on how to find and interpret rules about routing?

Thanks!

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Travel is a powerful antidote to contemporary American arrogance.

The routing provisions are usually stated towards the end of the fare rules, try Expedia for example. Here is a randomly chosen example, for BOS-SAN, fare class BE14BSNX on CO:

ROUTING 6 FROM BOS-CO-NYC/EWR-CO-CLE-
OR FROM BOS-CO-NYC/EWR-CO-DTT-
OR FROM BOS-CO-CLE-CO-DTT-CO-CLE-
VIA CO-DAY/TPA/RIC/ORL/MEM/FLL/

A great exception to the 4-hour limit on connections (and how to get a free overnight visit with friends) is what I call the "last in, first out" rule. It is valid (at least with DL on all fares).

If a customer takes the a flight to a destination late in the day and there are no more flights to his next destination that same day, the rule allows the customer to spend the night in that intermediate city and go out on the first flight the next morning. It does take some work to get this arranged and some agents need some prompting to set the reservation up this way. But it is valid!

A good use of this rule is when using award seats. Many times I can not book an award seat all the way through on the outbound in one calendar day. So, I will take my first flight from my home city to a hub (either ALT, CVG or CLT), spend the night and then begin again the next morning. When trying to travel on an award this way, many times seats become available.

also your routing of SJC-LAX-ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD-IYK would not be allowed because of the MPM (maximum permitted mileage. The MPM is the right of the unrestricted ticket holder to deviate from the non-stop/direct routing by upto 25% of the distance.

and of course, as SK has rightly mentioned certain sectors have specific permissable routings.