Back to back consequences
 

Hi All!

I am trying to get from ATL to LYS in business class w/o a weekend stay - the flights on ST and *A are all ridiculously expensive. As a cost saving measure, I was thinking of perhaps buying two tickets as a back to back and saving about $2000.

In other words, buying a RT ATL-LYS on week 1 LYS-ATL on week 2 and then buying a second RT LYS-ATL on week 1 and ATL-LYS on week 2. I would (almost certainly) not use the second half of either ticket.

Would the airline/FFP sanction me in this case? I am thinking that I should go with one airline and return with the second.

Thanks for your input and I am not running for supreme court. :)

If you use two different airlines.... and do not try to post miles to one account (if both in same alliance) you will probably be OK.

Why not have the "throw away" portions schedule far out.... to have another round trip... could be good for miles. A good reason to go back to France? :)

This may sound too basic, but have you looked into one way business class tickets? In the limited amount of paid business class I've done, I've often found that one way tickets are approx 1/2 the round trip price. If you are planning on throwing away the return of two round trips, perhaps booking a one way for part of the journey would save even more money.

Depending on where your final destination is (and how price sensitive you are), it may also make sense to look at flights into Geneva. A quick search on Kayak for some random dates (without a Sat night stay) at the beginning of August showed about $4300 all in. That should be lower than 2 RTs to Lyon.