Thanks to airlines bringing back a much-maligned ticket tariff, the minimum stay, business travelers can find that if you return on a Saturday, your ticket could be as much as three times as much as if you returned on Sunday. For instance, “A woman has a morning meeting in Norfolk, Va., on Thursday. On Continental, the round-trip fare from Newark is about $875. But if she stays through Saturday night, the fare is about $250,” NYT reports. Their excuse? Soaring oil prices. Luckily, there is a way around it: buy two back-to-back roundtrip tickets, one going to your destination on your preferred departure date, one coming back on your preferred return date. Toss two legs of the trip and it can end up being cheaper than the one original ticket.
It’s Back: The Minimum Stay [NYT]
(Photo: Getty)
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@balthisar:
I absolutely agree. It is why you have people paying $30 for movie tickets and $70 for metroliner service on Amtrak. It is a great way to price yourself away away from the families with kids.
i bet you get on special government lists for only using one way of a two way ticket
likewise if you are getting off at a middle stop…
When staffed on projects it’s typical for consultants to “Flip” their flights, ie: start booking friday-monday trips home instead of monday-friday trips to the client. No need to buy extra flights, and if your engagement is long enough you can book a round-trip that brackets it and you don’t even need to buy two one-way tickets or drop any legs.
While airlines are, of course, free to price their services however they want, people don’t like being fucked. Two things will hopefully kill the incompetent domestic airlines for good: Deregulation allowing Foreign carriers to compete in the US and High Speed Rail (short haul flights). The domestic carriers are one industry that doesn’t deserve our patience, our regulatory protection, or our subsidies.
@balthisar: I suggest you then stick to business or first class and not bitch about the rate hikes, because that only makes you a hypocrite. You either want the fares to go up or you don’t want them to go up; you can’t have it both ways. Or you can try to start an airline that imposes a dress code, a moral code of behavior, and a minimum IQ score – one that you yourself would hopefully be able to attain.
@dumblonde: It’s actually not germain to the discussion, but jet fuel (on a per gallon basis) is more expensive right now than gasoline. Distillate fuels in general are very, very strong. Check out the price of diesel the next time you pass a gas station.
I’ve gotten caught doing back-to-back tickets before. Don’t do it on the same airline, and don’t do it repeatedly. All moral arguments aside, the airlines will not honor your ticket if they catch you.
This is not particularly awesome advice, Consumerist.
Wow, the hostility towards business travelers here is ridiculous. As someone who occasionally has to travel for business, let me say: the only people who get away with luxurious first class travel and convenient flight times are the “important” people. The rest of us poor business travellers are stuck with the lousy time slots and we’ll end up staying in some crummy place over the weekend to save our companies a few bucks. Oh, and by the way, I don’t get paid for that time. Business trips are not to exotic places like Fiji or Paris most of the time….they’re to very mundane places like Indiana or NJ. You can put up a fuss so that they bring you home right away, but they pressure you into staying if it saves them a substantial amount of money.
So to find out that my company has to pay 4 times the fare than the rude vacation bozo sitting next to me (with probably a lap baby as well), just so that I can be home with my family over the weekend…well, that impacts the company budget, probably decreases the raise I get & the cost of the products you buy, and if I frequently put up a fuss to get home quickly, I most likely decrease my chances of promotion. And no, I don’t work for that crummy of a company. That’s the realities of business travel, and I’m tired of people thinking it’s some kind of perk & that business travelers ought to get reamed. Pay your fair share of the cost of travel, whether its for business or pleasure.
A lot of times, though, the airline has algorithms that figure out
what you are trying to do and will prevent it by canceling your
ticket.
Take a look at the following link from Delta’s website. There is a
section there on prohibited ticketing practices.
http://www.delta.com/planning_reservations/plan_flight/online_reservations/fares_ticketing_rules/
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Jack Doyle
I’m a business traveler as well. Since i fly weekly, out on Monday and back on Thursday, I plan to do things a little differently. I’m going to buy a one way ticket to my destination on Monday. I’m then going to buy a round trip home and back to work, leaving Thursday and returning on Monday for the duration of my project. When it’s over, I’ll buy a one way back home. This doesn’t violate any of the airlines rules as I am not missing any legs of a flight.
Just my $0.02