Back-to-Back Ticket Questions
 

I have two trips to the UK upcoming.

Let's say I don't want to have to stay over a Saturday night. And non-Satuday night stay tickets are running to be very expensive of late.

Anybody have any experience with UA's ability to track two "nested itineraries"?

Such as:

JFK-LHR on Monday (Ticket 1)
LHR-JFK on Friday (Ticket 2)
JFK-LHR the next Monday (Ticket 2)
LHR-JFK the next Friday (Ticket 1)

How good are they at picking this up if I don't use my MP number on Ticket 2? (And ask for mileage credit later.)

Or if I buy from different sources (say Ticket 1 on UAL.com and Ticket 2 on Expedia).

How about if I make Ticket 2 an award ticket? Allowable?

It's generally against their rules to book interleaved itineraries for the sole purpose of avoiding stay requirements. It's all up to your conscience...

Based on my conscience :D :D :D , and using Otto's example:

--I would book Ticket 1 as far in advance as possible, with my conscience telling me that Ticket 1 was all I needed.

--Perhaps a week or two later, I'd suddenly realize that I need to get back to home over the weekend, but my conscience tells me that's a separate issue with a separate ticket purchase. At that point, because my situation has changed, I would book Ticket 2.

QED.

If I was going to do this, I would either credit the nested trip to another airline (heck, even book another airline that partners with United... and credit to United) or just put in the MP number up front.

If you manually ask for credit later, you are asking for someone to manually look at your account... why encourage it?

William

This is back-to-back. Not allowed. Edited to add: see post #6 below for a nested ticket.


Don't know about this.


I don't think buying from two different sources will make a difference, since they're not checking for back-to-back at purchase point, but on the flying (or mileage crediting end).

I've seen a case where the ticketing was A-B on ticket one then B-C and C-B on ticket two, then B-A on ticket one. It was not only allowed, both RTs counted toward a promotion. This was all mid-week mind you, but it didn't seem to cause any trouble.

That's a nested itinerary (assuming that A and C are not co-terminals), which is OK.

I think I have come up with a creative way to address this problem:

JFK-LHR (Ticket 1 - UA Ticket, UA Metal)

LHR-FRA (Ticket 2 - LH Ticket, LH Metal) connecting to FRA-JFK (Ticket 2 - LH Ticket, UA Metal)

JFK-FRA (Ticket 2 - LH Ticket, UA Metal) connecting to FRA-LHR (Ticket 2 - LH Ticket, LH Metal)

LHR-JFK (Ticket 1 - UA Ticket, UA Metal)

I can even use my UA SWUs to upgrade the FRA-JFK legs.

Am I in the clear here, avoiding any potential back-to-back problems with UA?

It doesn't seem that there's a lot they can do after you've already flown the flights. And frankly I don't see United matching mileage credits and denying you credit on LH.

The conscience side is another story, although it's debatable whether flights on another carrier can violate ua's contract of carriage.