Earl Evleth

With some airlines you are breaking the purchase contract
if you don`t use the return ticket! First news to me.

Any comments??? Experiences???

Earl

***




Is justice served by ticket rules?

Susan Stellin NYT
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

*
NEW YORK Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court inadvertently
raised a hot-button travel issue last month in explaining why he was not
recusing himself from a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney.

Offering details about his January duck-hunting trip with the vice
president, Scalia disclosed that even though he had flown to Louisiana on
the vice president's plane, he bought a round-trip ticket on a commercial
airline to return to Washington, because it was less expensive than the
one-way fare.

That is a tactic familiar to anyone who has discovered that one-way fares
can be triple the price of flying round trip. But most travelers probably
don't know that five of the six largest U.S. airlines - American,
Continental, Delta, Northwest and US Airways - explicitly prohibit buying a
round-trip ticket with the intention of throwing half away.

Ed Turner, a spokesman for the Supreme Court, declined to say which airline
Scalia flew. But the two airlines that fly nonstop from New Orleans to
Washington are US Airways and United, and United does not the have same
policy as its competitors, leaving open the possibility that Scalia didn't
skirt any rules.

Although it may seem ludicrous that an airline could require passengers to
fly both segments of a ticket, the ban on so-called throwaway ticketing is
buried in an airline's contract of carriage, an often lengthy, legally dense
document drawn up by each airline outlining the terms of every ticket sale.
Also known as "tariff rules," these policies range from the fees for excess
baggage or for transporting a surfboard to the airline's right to deny
boarding to anyone "malodorous."

Most airlines post these contracts on their Web sites, and they do enforce
their terms, often to the surprise of passengers who don't know such rules
exist.

Besides the ban on throwaway ticketing, the six major carriers (including
United) prohibit "back-to-back ticketing": buying two round-trip tickets and
using half of each to avoid paying for a more expensive ticket that does not
include a Saturday-night stay. The big six also forbid "hidden city
ticketing" (sometimes called "point beyond ticketing"): buying a ticket to a
more distant city (San Francisco, say) and then getting off at a stopover
point (Chicago) because the San Francisco ticket is cheaper than the one to
Chicago.

The ticketing rules are primarily intended to prevent business travelers
from buying cheaper leisure fares, and how often they are enforced is a
matter of some debate. Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American Airlines, said
the carrier could detect back-to-back or hidden-city ticketing more easily
than it could someone's buying a round-trip ticket to fly one way. "It's
almost impossible for us to know why someone didn't use the second half of a
ticket," Wagner said.

But he defended the airline's throwaway ticketing rule. "If somebody books a
round-trip ticket and never intends to fly that second portion, that's lost
revenue for us," he said.

The logic of that argument may leave some travelers scratching their heads,
but the airlines do try to enforce these rules, either by imposing penalties
on the passenger or on a travel agent who booked the ticket. Although the
penalties vary by airline, the big six all outline various actions they may
take against passengers who violate ticketing rules. Among the options:
invalidating the rest of the passenger's ticket; forcing the passenger to
pay the difference between the purchased fare and the price of a new ticket;
deleting frequent-flier miles from an account, or revoking the passenger's
elite status. To this list, Continental adds a more draconian option: legal
action.

As it happens, the courts are not unfamiliar with this matter - despite
Scalia's apparent naïveté about throwaway ticketing, even the Supreme Court
has had a brush with the debate. At least two class-action lawsuits
challenging these ticketing practices (or penalties) are working their way
through the federal courts - one brought by a group of passengers and one
filed by a group of travel agents. And an appeal involving one of them
reached the nation's highest court.

The first case was filed in 1996 by a passenger, Nelson Chase, who was
caught flying on a hidden-city ticket by Northwest Airlines. Other
passengers later joined as plaintiffs and the defendants now include
American, Continental, Delta and US Airways.

In the painstaking march to an actual outcome, the case was granted
class-action status in May 2002 - a decision the airlines appealed
unsuccessfully to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in
Cincinnati. In June, the Supreme Court declined, without comment, to hear
another appeal by the airlines. As for what happens next, a New York law
firm representing the plaintiffs would not comment, but presumably the case
is proceeding toward trial.

The other case was filed in 1999 by a group of travel agents against
American Airlines, its parent company and the Airlines Reporting Corp.,
which acts as a clearinghouse between the airlines and travel agents; that
suit was granted class-action status last July.

The plaintiffs claim that after American began charging travel agents
penalties for booking tickets that violated ticketing rules, the airline and
Airlines Reporting Corp. threatened to revoke their authorization to issue
tickets on American if the agents did not pay the fines - actions the agents
say violate racketeering laws.

Theoretically, one of these cases could reach the Supreme Court, potentially
presenting another recusal decision for Scalia. But in practice, these
ticketing rules may become moot long before then. Low-fare airlines like
JetBlue and Southwest have built successful businesses selling one-way
tickets without a premium and cheap last-minutes fares, putting pressure on
their older competitors.

The New York Times


*

127 . 0 . 0 . 1

On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 16:11:24 +0200, Earl Evleth <>
wrote:

    >With some airlines you are breaking the purchase contract
    >if you don`t use the return ticket! First news to me.
    >Any comments??? Experiences???
that's because you're a nit wit who posts copywrited articles



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Because of the current email spam attacks my email account is not included,
reply via the newsgroups or ask for a valid email address.

Pltrgyst

On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 11:38:31 -0400, 127.0.0.1 <>
wrote:

    >that's because you're a nit wit who posts copywrited articles

Do you mean as opposed to a nitwit who can't spell
"copyright"?

-- Larry

Keith Willshaw

"Earl Evleth" <> wrote in message
news:BC98872D.2DCB2%...
    > With some airlines you are breaking the purchase contract
    > if you don`t use the return ticket! First news to me.
    > Any comments??? Experiences???

Technically true perhaps but I dont know
of anyone who has been penalised for this.
Since they cant actually force you to
fly they would have to prove in court you
never intended to use the return half which would
seem somewhat problematic. Back to back tickets
are a different matter since its clear and
easily provable that you did indeed intennd to
circumvent the ticket pricing.

This of course does NOT apply if the 2 sets
of tickets are purchased from different airlines.
Then the same practise is quite legal.

Keith

127 . 0 . 0 . 1

On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 11:52:16 -0400, pltrgyst <>
wrote:

    >On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 11:38:31 -0400, 127.0.0.1 <>
    >wrote:
    >>that's because you're a nit wit who posts copywrited articles
    >Do you mean as opposed to a nitwit who can't spell
    >"copyright"?

how clever, a spelling flame



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Because of the current email spam attacks my email account is not included,
reply via the newsgroups or ask for a valid email address.

Earl Evleth

On 6/04/04 18:39, in article c4umf1$f5q$1$, "Keith
Willshaw" <> wrote:

    > This of course does NOT apply if the 2 sets
    > of tickets are purchased from different airlines.
    > Then the same practise is quite legal.
    >
    > Keith


The other question is Eurostar. We have use Eurostar one
way and the tickets are VERY EXPENSIVE, clearly near or
more than one say tickets.

We won't use them one way again for a while but
the other question is on train tickets on Eurostar.

Earl

Earl Evleth

On 6/04/04 19:11, in article ,
"127.0.0.1" <> wrote:

    > On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 11:52:16 -0400, pltrgyst <>
    > wrote:
    >
    >> On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 11:38:31 -0400, 127.0.0.1 <>
    >> wrote:
    >>
    >>> that's because you're a nit wit who posts copywrited articles
    >>
    >> Do you mean as opposed to a nitwit who can't spell
    >> "copyright"?
    >
    > how clever, a spelling flame
    >

L'arroseur arrosé!

Earl

Nightjar

"Earl Evleth" <> wrote in message
news:BC98872D.2DCB2%...
    > With some airlines you are breaking the purchase contract
    > if you don`t use the return ticket! First news to me.

Then you haven't read the small print nor some of the threads that have been
on here. Some of the cross-channel ferry companies have been known to charge
the difference in cost to the credit card of people who have paid by card
for a cheap day return and used it as a single. Under UK law, you are deemed
to have given your authority for them to do so when you buy the ticket with
a card and accept the terms and conditions attached to it. Apparently, in
the USA, that would require a separate authorisation.

Colin Bignell

Earl Evleth

On 7/04/04 0:43, in article 40733276$0$13681$,
"nightjar .uk.com>" <nightjar@<insert_my_surname_here> wrote:

    > Then you haven't read the small print nor some of the threads that have been
    > on here. Some of the cross-channel ferry companies have been known to charge
    > the difference in cost to the credit card of people who have paid by card
    > for a cheap day return and used it as a single.


Can you pay cash???

Earl

Giovanni Drogo

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004, Earl Evleth wrote:

    > The other question is Eurostar. We have use Eurostar one way and
    > the tickets are VERY EXPENSIVE, clearly near or more than one say
    > tickets.

I remember that 20 years ago (in British Rail times) in the UK a "day
return" or "weekend return" ticket had a price comparable to a single.

I also know that in Germany railways sometimes have offers (typically
for off-peak days in a week) with a fixed price (or a few fixed prices
for a range of distances) for a return trip. Buying two of those, not
using the return trip on one, staying over a weekend and not using the
first half on the other, could have been cheaper than a return ticket,
when travelling across two weeks. I remember a colleague told me that
Max Planck Institute was actually encouraging their staff to do so.