Either way - the solution is to buy the ticket off the airline's web site or any web site for that matter and maybe even use 2 carriers. You get the cheap fare and the airline is stuffed. Using the web, who are they going to send a debit memo to? As I said before, we are in now in a perfect storm for the airlines. The technology at a user level is awesome and airlines might see higher loads but yields are shot. Its great to be a customer right now. -----Original Message----- From: The Airline List [mailto:AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU]On Behalf Of mmontano@direct.ca Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 8:55 AM To: AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU Subject: Re: Travel Weekly -- United moves to stem back-to-back ticketing Actually the particular rule for UA and I assume all the majors identifies something more specific. The wording is: USE OF COUPONS FROM TWO OR MORE TICKETS ISSUED AT ROUND TRIP FARES FOR THE PURPOSE OF CIRCUMVENTING APPLICABLE -TARIFF RU= LES (SUCH AS ADVANCE PURCHASE/MINIMUM STAY REQUIREMENTS) IS NOT PERMITTED.... UNDER SUCH CIRCUMSTANCE WHEN THERE IS OBVIO= US INTENT TO ABUSE AND/OR MISUSE RESTRICTED ROUND TRIP FARES. The practices being avoided and referred to is if you live in Houston and have to be in Newark for Tuesday/Wednesday is t= o buy a ticket Houston->Newark on Tuesday with the return leg the following week sometime. And then buy a ticket Newark->= Houston for Wednesday with the return leg also in the following week. Both fares would meet Saturday stay requirements, and would cheaper than a straight Houston->Newark->Houston ticket. The rule above states if you are using individual coupons from separate reservations to do your travel, and using those s= eparate coupons to circumvent the fare you would of normally paid for your trip, then you are fraudulently using tickets.= This violates your contract of carriage and UAL doesn't have to fly you where you were planning to go. The simple litmus= test is that if you used all the coupons on the dates you booked them, you would end up being in two cities at once. The MSP/IAD example below had the full use of all coupons, each trip used the coupons in sequence and each trip was purch= ased per the advance purchase requirements. Cheaper yes, against UAL's rules, no. How could UAL argue that you didn't book a ticket at 10am to go to MSP for two weeks and then at 10:15am had to book a ti= cket from MSP->IAD->MSP because you had to be home on the weekend for a wedding? If UAL permitted changes to their reserv= ations without whacking you for $100USD, they might have a point. Matthew Original Message: ----------------- From: Nick Laflamme dplaflamme@alumni.nd.edu Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 11:15:03 -0400 To: AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU Subject: Re: Travel Weekly -- United moves to stem back-to-back ticketing At 04:54 PM 6/12/2002 +0200, you wrote: >Hi all, > >pardon my ignorance but would one of the travel agents among us please tell >me exactly what back-to-back ticketing is and why UA has a problem with it? I'm not a travel agent, but I'll answer anyway. Suppose I live in Washington but need to spend two work-weeks in Minneapolis. If I book two tickets for consecutive weeks in which I fly out from Washington on Sunday night and fly home Friday afternoon, I have two trips, each without a Saturday night stay, and that excludes me from most discount fares as set up for North American domestic travel. Suppose, however, I book one ticket for flying out Sunday night, returning the Friday afternoon a week and a half away. That qualifies for the discount fare. Then I book a ticket from MSP to IAD leaving the Friday four days after I first left Washington, returning to MSP two days later. That, too, has a Saturday stay -- in my hometown of Washington! :-) That's "back-to-back" ticketing, and it circumvents the spirit of the fare classes, which are designed to, um, extract the highest fares from those who can most afford it, business men who are home Saturday nights. I'm not supposed to have two tickets currently active, one of which thinks I'm spending my Saturday "out of town" in Minneapolis and one of which thinks I'm spending my Saturday "out of town" back in Washington. To make it less obvious, many folks in this hypothetical situation would take the middle weekend's flights on a different carrier, such as NW. This would make it less obvious to UA that I wasn't in MSP over that Saturday night. I don't think the airlines have an issue when the traveller leaves the second town over the weekend to fly to a third town, such as flying YVR-SFO-YVR in the midst of an IAD-YVR-IAD trip. Certainly I didn't feel guilty for visiting my parents near SF while on business in Vancouver. ("As long as I'm on the West Coast anyway....") >Thanks. > >Rgds >Jan Broe >EKCH ATC Nick -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .