I am about to book an agenda, and I was curious if others take different airlines on the same trip. I live near ACY, but that reswtricts me to Air Tran & Spirit. I try to avoid PHL (for obvious reasons), so I am going to SAN, and the times worked out great to take Air Tran RT, ACY-ATL, and DL RT, ATL-SAN. I leave plenty of connection time, but the looming thought is always if there is a substantial delay in one leg, I am SOL because each carrier is only concerned with their ticket. Any one else book like this?

I've done it before in Asia and Europe without issue. Just allow plenty of time for your connection. If you have any checked bags, you should be able to check them all the way through if you show the ACY agent your continuing ticket.

I try not to book tickets like that in airports I am not familiar with to prevent needing to reclear security. Since all of ATL is connected behind security I have connected from FL to DL and v.v.

IIRC...Airtran would let me check in online (for their flight) whether I was going DL-FL or FL-DL, but DL would only let me check in if they were the first leg

so:
DL-FL check in for both online
FL-DL check in for FL online, but in person for DL.

This is a situation where one - if this itinerary is the best option - uses expedia / travelocity / etc. to create a multi-city ticket on the various airlines (if it will price). If there's a misconnect, the "travel agent" is supposed to work on your behalf.

I indeed booked a trip like that. BER-MUC on LH metal, MUC-DXB on Emirates, and so on. My only reason to do this were *very* significant svaings on the air fare and the attached taxes (incredibly high back here).

I would not encourage pax on tight schedules to try something like that, since there are several drawbacks - apart from the one you have already mentioned - attached:

(+) baggage allowance differs greatly, in particular for the connecting flights
(+) baggage is *NOT* checked through, causing you to completely check-out plus an immediate check-in with possibile queuing (probably in another terminal building)
(+) delay issues (as you have already mentioned)
(+) frequent schedule changes (many airlines are down-sizing atm)
(+) no single point of information (schedules, tickets, seats, etc.)
(+) no signle point of contact when something goes wrong

For fairly easy itins this might work out just fine ... but you should allow for some padding on every segment. Things that can go wrong, will go wrong!

Honestly in cases like this I would recommend using orbitz etc.. so that it's all on ONE RECORD. That way if there are problems Air Tran (on the outbound) or DL (on the return) have to get you to the final destination.

Yes- I'm flying SEA-LAX on AS (and getting my full elite benefits), LAX-JFK on AA (and using a voucher for the ticket + miles + copay to get a business class upgrade). I'm not particularly worried because there's a ton of time between the flights (I did it this way to get a longer layover in LA), and if my flight went mechanical or something, AS flies a LOT of planes to LAX- there's plenty of time built into the schedule.

I also mix and match carriers on roundtrips- AS SEA to LAS, DL or WN back, VX SEA to LAX, AS back.

Good idea, unfortunately all the services I tried want to connect me either ACY-ATL (Air Tran), [I]BUT [I] then ATL-PHX-SAN on US, or through Denver on Frontier. I would rather stick with DL for the potential UG's.

Look at Expedia then or book it as a multi-city itinerary on Orbitz.

When I redeem miles for award travel I often have segments on different airlines within an alliance. Sky Team works well for me. I get elite seating and special meals lifted from my home airline profile.

As this is not Delta-specific, I am moving the thread to TravelBuzz for further discussion.
Obscure2k
Delta Moderator

Keep in mind, the policy of Orbitz is that they just list flights and sell tix, and that you are acting as your own travel agent. Therefore, when things go wrong, they will not back you up; you're on your own.

I've fought them on this and lost.

This is not uncommon. I have done as many as 4 airlines in a single weekend to match up the best schedules.

I often go from east coast to west on DL, CO, or UA. But I hop around on WN. They usually have great fares between SAN/LAS/SFO/RNO etc. The RR credits build up quick too.

Likewise. A lot of places I go are served by different airlines.