so when is nested ticketing allowed?
 

I've done it multiple times. A-B-A original trip. Plans change, book B-A-B, or B-C-B and extend (with change fee/fare), the original B-A return.

they get all the money and many times have to book higher fares for the original trip.

Is this wrong? UA agents do it for me.

if your doing a change fee that means that you are changing the original itinerary. if you only have one itinerary, its not possible to do back-back ticketing. back-to-back ticketing only exists when you have more than one itinerary. (at least thats how i understand it, because from what i understand, it requires taking the flights out of order-which you obviously cant do on one itin).

That's different. From the text pasted by other members, "obvious" only applies to barring the travel agents from issuing the ticket and holding them liable for the fare difference.

The customer is barred from using tickets out of order with intent to circumvent fare rules, whether the intent is obvious or not.

The difference is that the TA doesn't know the customer's intent, so the TA is only punished for ticketing "obviously" abusive tickets, but the customer is punished for all abusive tickets.

The whole point of back-to-back tickets is that they are purchased separately; and only the combined use of them is against the rules, so united.com can't "figure it out" because it doesn't know what other tickets you have booked. If United.com checked your existing itineraries, people could just take off their MP# temporarily when booking, etc. So this is not something that UA can reasonably be expected to just "fix" .bomb to not sell the ticket.

:confused: Apology, sure. But why is $600 required for the apology to be meaningful? At $600 a pop, I'd gladly be yelled at by agents all day!

I was thinking of the broader definition of "back-to-back ticketing" used in this UA press release: "As a result of an audit of tickets earlier this year, the company detected a sizeable number of transactions that involve violations of its tariff rules. The prohibited practice is commonly referred to as 'back-to-back ticketing.' Flight coupons across tickets are used in an order other than that in which they were issued. Ultimately, it results in a wrongful effort to obtain a discount to which the customer is not entitled."

It refers to tariff rule violations, but does not say that the violations must be intentional.

You are correct, however, in showing that the definition given in the CoC requires that the ticketing be done for the purpose of circumventing tariff rules, in order to be prohibited conduct. ^

That said, I don't think someone who used back-to-back ticketing to circumvent fare rules would be able to get off the hook by claiming that he had some other purpose for booking the tickets in that way. I'm pretty sure that UA would not have to definitively prove intent, as long as they have reasonable grounds for suspecting it.

It's fine as long as you're not doing it to circumvent fare restrictions.

That definition doesn't make sense because (a) it implies that coupons in a given ticket are issued in a specified order (they're really all issued simultaneously), and (b) it says that if you buy a ticket in February, and a ticket in March, you cannot use the one purchased in March before the one issued in February. They really should get someone who understands the English language to write their press releases.

As to (a), I've seen that definition used on many other travel websites.
For example, here.

Back when there were paper tickets, the coupons in a given ticket were actually issued in a specified order. And even with e-tickets now, each coupon has a "coupon number"...they are numbered sequentially, from the first leg to the last leg on the same ticket.

As to (b), I think you are right that it may be overbroad and include permissible activity within its scope. However, I think the key is that it says "flight coupons across tickets are used," whereas if the two trips are completely different trips, it would be okay to take them "out of order" since you're not using flight coupons across tickets. You're using all of the second ticket before using any of the first ticket.

We disagree often, college, but this time, I am in complete agreement with you. You summed it up the way I only wish I could.

Does UA really ever come after customers who purchase nested tickets? Wouldn't they be shooting themselves in the foot? I mean, if I *ever* hear of something like this happening, I will immediately start booking the nested/concurrent/backtoback/whatever on a different carrier. So I'll lose some mileage on my preferred airline, big deal, but UA will lose a lot of my money! I just don't see the sense in doing that, but then I'm not the brightest.

It seems to me you are pretty bright!

What I'd like to know however (and it has probably been explained already, so I must not be very bright either), is just how this rogue CSR became aware of a "back to back" or whatever situation.

I do it quite often out of necessity and never once has anyone breathed a word of it to me... (and they'd better not).

:cool:

Why, thank you, fastair! :)

UA wouldn't be losing "a lot of money" if you are using back-to-back ticketing to circumvent tariff rules and get cheap tickets. Especially if your bookings are displacing other, less discounted bookings on full flights.

I'm a FTer, of course I buy cheap fares that would not be much for UA to lament the loss of to another carrier. But here's where the big money is lost: because of these rules, the company I work for prohibits nesting of tickets on any one airline. They have no intention of circumventing rules but do not want the hassle that could come from potential exposure to a claim from innocent nesting that has no impact on the cost of a trip but still could constitute a violation in someone's eyes. So for quite a few years it has been the policy that any nested trip be on a different carrier. I'm on a trip SFO-DEN-SFO for two months? Want to go home for a weekend? DEN-SFO-DEN will have to be on Frontier. Multiply by 1000 traveling employees. Just saying.

Even if your intent was to deny money to UA, this hardly seems possible. Most of the time that people do this (intentionally), it's to circumvent minimum stay rules. But you've stayed in AMS far longer than any minimum stay that I've ever heard of anyway.

On top of that, your expensive fare may not have had a minimum stay requirement anyway.

If UA cannot have possibly lost money because of the way you arranged this, then there's no reason for them to get mad at you. Especially if there was no intent on your part.

EDIT: in other words, you can only be accused of circumventing fare rules if you actually circumvent the rules, and as others have pointed out, only if you had intent to do so.

That's not just nesting. That actually is back-to-back ticketing.

If your company was doing nested itineraries like SFO-DEN-SFO and DEN-LAS-DEN, there should be no problem at all doing it on one carrier.

You should also be able to do DEN-SFO-DEN within a SFO-DEN-SFO if the SFO-DEN-SFO is a high fare with no minimum stay requirements...but if the back-to-back return to SFO happens to get you out of the minimum stay, too, it makes sense for UA to crack down (especially because they can't tell who just happened to do it, and who's deliberately doing it to circumvent the fare rules), and your company is wise to book the back-to-back return on two different carriers.

It also doesn't sound like your company's policy specifically hurts United, since it applies to all carriers. Since United is equally likely to lose half of a back-to-back ticket that gets booked on Frontier instead, or pick up an extra half of a back-to-back ticket that would have been booked on Frontier but for the company's avoidance policy, there may not be a net loss for UA.

On the other hand, if UA marketed itself as specifically not caring about back-to-back ticketing, they could attract more business from companies like yours that just don't want to deal with hassle, but would also attract more business from individuals and companies deliberately using back-to-back tickets to circumvent fare rules and create special discounts--which actually would create a loss for United.

The agent was wrong. Your B fare has no minimum stay so there is no tariff violation.