The airline booking guide is a tactic used by travelers on commercial flights to lower the cost of flying to the desired destination. This tactic utilizes inefficiencies in pricing by working around airline fares and route systems, often because of the use of airline hubs by airlines. Some such tactics exist.
Video Airline booking ploys
Ticket departure
Runaway ticket is purchasing a ticket with the intent to only use a portion of the trip included. This situation may arise when a passenger wants to travel in only one way, but where the return trip fares are cheaper than a one-way ticket. This can happen to the main line operator where all one-way tickets are full price. For example a passenger who just wants to fly from Los Angeles to New York can find a one-way ticket costing $ 800, but the return ticket is $ 500. Passengers therefore buy a commute from Los Angeles to New York and return to Los Angeles, plane to New York, but stay in New York and "throw" the second half of the ticket by not showing up for a return flight. It is only possible to "throw" the last segment of the ticket, since discarding the segment by not appearing for outbound travel often causes the airline to cancel the entire reservation.
Hidden city ticket
The hidden city ticket is a single-use ticket variant. Passenger book tickets to fictitious destinations ("hidden" city) with connections at the intended destination, walk away at the connection node, and discard remaining segments. Flight tickets are subject to market forces, and therefore do not need to correlate with the distance traveled. As a result, the flight between point A to point C, with the connection node at point B, may be cheaper than the flight between point A and point B. It is possible to buy flight tickets from point A to point C down at the connection node B, and remove the remaining segments (B to C).
Using hidden city tactics is usually practical only for one-way travel, as the airline will cancel the next part of the journey after a traveler descends. Thus, a round trip schedule needs to be made by combining two one-way flights together. This tactic also requires that passengers carry only luggage, as every checked baggage item will be dropped only at the final destination of the flight ticket. An exception to this requirement occurs when reentering the country where baggage must be processed by customs agents, when changing airports, or when train travel is involved in airline tickets. This makes it possible for travelers to take back their luggage before checking in for their final destination, and therefore only leave the airport. The hidden city passengers carry the risk of early flight being overbooked or canceled, and the airline moves the passenger to another route that passes the connection node.
The hidden city ticket violates most of the airline contracts. (Except the leading ones are Southwest Airlines, whose fee rules do not specifically prohibit the practice.) A person who rarely does so may not be pursued by an airline, but some frequent flyers report losing their frequent flier account loss or are threatened with a loss. Experienced leaflets recommend that if doing so more than once in a while, passengers do not associate their frequent flier numbers with reservations using hidden city tricks or crediting miles to partner airlines. In 2014, United Airlines and Orbitz filed a lawsuit against a search engine dedicated to finding hidden city tickets, accusing damages of lost revenue, but to no avail.
Maps Airline booking ploys
Back-to-back tickets
Back-to-back tickets are a type of nested ticketing where a traveler tries to avoid minimum stay requirements. For example, let's say a traveler wants to do two rounds of a midweek trip in two different weeks. At one time, airlines typically charge more for a midweek trip than a trip involving a Saturday night stay. The back-to-back ticket trick allows travelers to book two round-trip tickets with a fixed Saturday even though the actual trip is mid-week. If a business traveler wants to make two round trips from New York to Los Angeles in two consecutive weeks, instead of booking two round-trips in a separate week in the following ways:
- Ticket 1 exit: week 1 Monday New York to Los Angeles
- Ticket 1 returns: week 1 Friday Los Angeles to New York
- Ticket 2 out: week 2 Monday New York to Los Angeles
- Ticket 2 returns: week 2 Friday Los Angeles to New York
Travelers can rearrange travel itineraries, ride home on the way back to Los Angeles so that the trip out on both tickets is in the first week and the journey back in the second week.
- Ticket 1 exit: week 1 Monday New York to Los Angeles
- Ticket 2 out: week 1 Friday Los Angeles to New York
- Ticket 2 returns: week 2 Monday New York to Los Angeles
- Ticket 1 returns: week 2 Friday Los Angeles to New York
In such a case, the traveler seemed to stay on purpose on the weekend for both tickets (stayed in Los Angeles for ticket 1, and in New York for ticket 2), thus taking advantage of Saturday night requirements for both tickets.
In North America, the usefulness of this strategy has diminished materially, as most airlines have ignored discounts for a Saturday night stay for this type of trip. However, many inter-continental round-trip tickets still have minimum minimum stay requirements. Back-to-back tickets are useful with tickets when there is a minimum minimum stay at a discount (for example, 7 days), and travelers should stay only at the destination for a shorter period of time.
Legal status
The airlines are strongly opposed to ploys booking for financial reasons. Other reasons cited by airlines include "public security" issues, but these are not usually explained. Many airlines have set the means to identify and punish travelers who take advantage of the tactics, especially through their frequent flier program.
Ordering ploys is generally a breach of contract carriage between passengers and airlines. Breaking contracts is generally civil, not criminal. When a traveler is proven to have practiced the method, the airline can respond by seizing the ticket, canceling the frequent flier status, and the billing travel agent for the price difference.
References
Further reading
- Vauhini, Vara (January 5, 2015). "How Flight Opportunities Can Hurt Passengers". The New Yorker . Ã,
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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