Two tickets, same origin, same destination, same airline, same day, different time. Problem?
I booked a morning flight (US domestic) on Delta airlines. Unfortunately, something came up at work and I need to shift to an evening flight (same airline, same origin, same destination, 8 hours later) so that I can spend the day at work.
I can't get any money back for the morning flight. Is there any harm in keeping both tickets? Will the airline notice that I can't possibly take both flights and cancel one or both tickets?
There is a reasonable chance that my work engagement will be cancelled or rescheduled. (It has already been rescheduled once.) So if that happens I'll take my original flight. Thus there is some reason to keep both tickets.
Best Answer
Delta indeed may notice this and cancel one or more of your bookings. From their policies (in a page intended for travel agents):
All duplicate bookings generated by a single GDS subscriber are prohibited, including:
Multiple itineraries for any number of passengers with the same passenger name, whether identical itineraries or not
Reserving one or more seats on the same flight or different flights for the same time frame, regardless of the class of service or format used to make the reservations
Additionally, creating a reservation where it is logically impossible to be used on each segment created across one or more PNRs or GDSs is not permitted.
And from their contract of carriage:
E) Duplicate, Fictitious and impossible/illogical bookings
Delta prohibits duplicate, impossible, or fictitious bookings, including but not limited to multiple conflicting itineraries for the same passenger on the same day or bookings with connections that depart before the arrival of the inbound flight. Delta reserves the right to cancel any such booking which has not been ticketed, and to cancel and refund any such booking which is ticketed at a refundable fare.
They do have systems to catch this, where it's physically impossible for you to take both flights. Anecdotal experience varies on how this is enforced, with some people saying it worked out and some saying that the airline canceled one or contacted them to make them choose which reservation to keep.
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Can I book two flights on the same airline on the same day?
But the answer to the question is no \u2014 it is absolutely not against the law to book two tickets for the same day on the same route.Can two airlines have same PNR?
If your booking is for the roundtrip in the same airline (in single booking), then your PNR will be the same for both outbound and inbound flights. If you book your trip with different airlines then you will have 2 different PNRs for each airline.What happens if you double book a flight?
If you have purchased an airline ticket for the same person on two different sites, you must contact the airline immediately. Then you need to request to cancel one of them. Most airlines will get this done without any financial compensation.Can you book overlapping flights?
"Nested ticketing" or "nesting itineraries," sometimes also called "back-to-back flights," could help you save a ton on flights, but may be a little risky. It works best if you need to book two trips to and from the same destinations (say, going home to visit your family for Thanksgiving and then again for Christmas).How To Calculate Duration Across Time Zones
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