Consecutive ticketing is when a passenger books two flights to get around ticket restrictions such as Saturday night stay requirements or to avoid paying high prices for midweek travel. Although it is a difficult task to save money by buying multiple tickets, frequent travelers can use this trick to get special offers on discounted tickets.
Airlines don’t like practices like back-to-back ticketing, as passengers do so when trying to evade discount ticket restrictions, especially the Saturday night rule. As a result, regular business travelers can book two discounted round trips and only use one leg of each round trip ticket, which is still less expensive than non-discounted airfare.
Some airlines use the “Saturday Night Stay” rule to exclude business travelers from leisure travelers (and vice versa) when it comes to offering discounted flights. The Saturday Night Stay rule requires a passenger to stay overnight at their destination to qualify for roundtrip fares.
How does it work
Roundtrip airfare is typically higher if completed on weekdays, but discounted if the trip includes a weekend stay, meaning that many business travelers are unable to take advantage of the deals and often resort to the issuance of consecutive tickets to find a loophole in the restrictions. The best way to understand how this works is to look at an example.
For example, if a person staying in New York City wants to travel to Dallas on Tuesday but return to the city on Friday, to get discounts on roundtrip tickets, they would have to purchase two separate roundtrip tickets but with opposite starting points.
The first ticket would be a round-trip ticket that leaves New York on Tuesday and returns the following Monday, and the second would be a round-trip ticket that leaves Dallas on Friday and returns to Dallas the following Monday. The traveler would use the first part of the first set of tickets that he purchased for his outbound flight and the first part of the second set of tickets for his return to New York.
If the total cost of both roundtrip tickets, discounted for weekend stays, is less than a roundtrip flight completed within a week, you have successfully planned a return ticket.
Is allowed?
Buying back-to-back tickets to take advantage of travel deals reserved for leisure travelers is frowned upon in the airline industry, especially among business travelers. However, you can still get away with it if you are careful.
Unfortunately, if an airline discovers that a traveler has been issued consecutive tickets, it may cancel the tickets, deny boarding, issue a warning (marking your account for future purchases), or take some other form of action, such as blocking you from use their services in the future.
Successfully buying and using consecutive tickets is difficult, and really only worth it if you’re trying to get somewhere and back quickly, but roundtrip flights that take place during weekdays are too expensive. Most of the time, you will already be eligible for airline discounts if you are traveling on vacation, as you will likely want to stay at your destination until Saturday night anyway.
