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FAQ: Air Traveler's Handbook 1/4 [Monthly posting]
Section - [1-2] Nested/Overlapping Tickets Strategy

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Top Document: FAQ: Air Traveler's Handbook 1/4 [Monthly posting]
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If you travel regularly to a particular destination, but don't
stay over weekends, you can get the cheaper weekend rates by
staggering your tickets. I.e., if you're flying from A to B and back
Monday and Wednesday of Week 1, and the same Week 2, instead of buying
roundtrip tickets for each week, buy a roundtrip ticket leaving A
Monday of Week 1 and returning Wednesday of Week 2, and a second
roundtrip ticket leaving B Wednesday of Week 1 and returning to B
Monday of Week 2. This works out to be precisely the same flights, but
since both tickets are over a weekend, you get the cheaper rate. The
only problem is that you have to know your schedule in advance to make
this work. Using the Pittsburgh-San Francisco example from above, this
method would save you $1708 on a pair of midweek round trip flights.

If this seems confusing, perhaps the following diagram will make
things clearer.

		---                            ------
		|   A ----1----->>---MON---- B      |
		|                              ---  |
		|   A ----2-----<<---FRI---- B   |  |
		---                              |  |
		|   A ----3----->>---MON---- B   |  |
		|                              ---  |
		|   A ----4-----<<---FRI---- B      |
		---                            ------

The two round trip flights consist of two outgoing flights (1, 3) and
two returning flights (2, 4). Normally these are grouped as on the
left, with flight #1 from A to B being paired with flight #2 from B to
A, and similarly for flights #3 and #4. The result is two midweek
flights, neither of which is over a Saturday night. But we could also
pair flight #1 with flight #4, and flight #2 with flight #3, as shown
on the right.  Then the middle pair of flights (#2 and #3) becomes a
round trip with its origin at your destination, and both sets of round
trip tickets are over a Saturday night.

The 30-day maximum stay on discount fares prevents you from using this
overlapping round trip tickets trick if you travel to a destination
infrequently (say, every six months). If your trips are more than 30
days apart, here's a new trick to use. Buy two round trip discount
tickets (weekend stay) per trip, using one for the outgoing trip and
one for the return, and then turn in the return portion of each ticket
for credit towards your next trip. Even with the $25 or so processing
charge per ticket for crediting and reissuing the ticket, it is still
cheaper to do this than to buy a single round-trip ticket without a
weekend stay.

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Top Document: FAQ: Air Traveler's Handbook 1/4 [Monthly posting]
Previous Document: [1-1b] Advance Purchase Fares
Next Document: [1-x] Stopovers and Circle Trips

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Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:12 PM