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(c) Elliott Publishing.

Is My Ticket Illegal?
ChrisCrossings · November 14, 2001

Q: I will be traveling from Austin, Texas, to Bombay next month. But instead of a single round-trip ticket, I have one round-trip for Austin-Paris-Austin and another roundtrip for Paris-Bombay-Paris. I booked these tickets myself online. It cost me a few hundred dollars less this way as opposed to getting one ticket for the entire trip. The Austin-Paris-Austin leg is on Continental Airlines (code share with Air France) and the Paris-Bombay-Paris is on Air France.

Does this violate any airline rule that you know of? I did check thoroughly before booking, but recently, one travel agent told me this was back-to-back ticketing.

-- G.S. Ganeshkumar

A: You did a good job saving money on your airline ticket. I think your travel is more upset about being bypassed than the legality of your ticket. Because the itinerary as you describe it to me isn't a back-to-back; you're just using two airlines to get to your destination.

What is a back-to-back, or b2b, ticket? It's when you buy two cheaper tickets but only use half of each one, which still ends up costing less than booking a single, less-restricted ticket. Airlines say b2bs are violation of their tariff rules because they allow travelers to circumvent Saturday-night stay restrictions intended to force business travelers to pay hundreds - and at times even thousands - more per ticket. But a b2b can also be used by leisure travelers like you to get a better deal.

If this were a b2b, then you'd have two tickets from Austin to Bombay. You would use only half of each ticket - the outbound half on the first ticket and the inbound half on the second ticket. You'd then discard the unused portions.

Interestingly, a b2b would probably work on Continental and Air France. Even though the airlines are what are known as "codesharing" partners-meaning that they share certain flights, schedules, and frequent flier programs-chances are they don't have the wherewithal or even the inclination to track one-time b2b offenders like you. So you could buy two separate tickets, use them, and never have to worry about whether your ticket was legal or not. Other airlines are known to share information like this across their computer systems. When they find a b2b reprobate, they can confiscate their mileage rewards and bill the difference between the cheaper illegal tickets and the more expensive ones.

It's a good thing that you're concerned about having a legal ticket. It shows that you want to play by the rules even though the rules don't make much sense. I don't necessarily share your sentiments. I believe that b2bs are often a necessary strategy, and I strongly disagree with airlines that try to describe them as illegal. They simply aren't.

Last year, when I wrote about an airline crackdown on business travelers using b2b itineraries, my editors deleted large portions of the text because they believed the airline rhetoric and didn't want to encourage readers to do anything wrong. But as I recently reported, b2bs aren't illegal; they just upset the airlines that want to squeeze as much money out of passengers as possible. That makes the tickets inconvenient to the carriers, but not wrong.

The real issue here is what your agent told you, which is clearly false. There's a special place in hell reserved for agents who take advantage of travelers who don't fully understand the airline's Byzantine rules and regulations - that use scare tactics to get new business and spread misinformation in order to meet their bottom-line goals. It seems to me you may be working with such an agent.

I would look for a new travel counselor before booking your next trip.

Christopher Elliott's column appears on weekly on Ticked.com. All e-mailed questions to ChrisCrossings become property of Ticked.com and may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion. You may reach Elliott at chris@ticked.com. Or visit his home page at http://www.elliott.org.