3-way airline trips?
 

My wife and I are planning a trip to New Orleans. Then, we'd like to take 4-5 days to tour the Robert Trent Jones trail in Alabama, as we are both avid golfers, and we've heard many good things about the RTJ trail. Then we will return home to Los Angeles.<BR><BR>I'm not too familiar with booking "3-way" air fares such as this. My question is- does this need to be booked as 3 separate legs (LAX-New orleans, New Orleans-Birmingham, Birmingham-LAX); or can it be booked as a LAX-Birmingham trip with a "stopover" in New Orleans? In other words, can my "stopover" in New Orleans be 3 or 4 days, before I complete the rest of the flight to Birmingham?<BR><BR>Also, can I book this as one round-trip (LAX-New Orleans, then Birmingham-LAX) using frequent flyer miles? I seem to remember using FF miles once to fly to Hawaii, and I believe I flew into Oahu, and out of Maui, so I'm thinking perhaps this is kosher?

something you have to play with at orbitz.com. If that does not work call airline sounds like a stop over option.

Are you going to drive from New Orleans to Birmingham, or are you going to fly?<BR><BR>I have had good luck using Orbitz and Expedia to book "multiple destinations" travel. You might try putting your entire itinerary in Orbitz, for instance, and see what comes up.

It depends. Using paid R/T tickets, on US Air, we have regularly flown Baltimore (BWI) to Miami (MIA). Then returned from Key West (EYW) to MIA. <BR><BR>That's called an "open jaw." <BR><BR>However, we tried to do it with bump/voucher tickets on US Air, and it's not allowed. Also, US Air only has so many "award" seats per flight. Once those are allocated (and you can't tell from their web site,) you can't fly nowhere, nohow, on that flight.<BR><BR>However, we had an AA voucher. It allowed us to fly from Harrisburg (MDT,) to LAX. And return a week later from SFO to MDT. And we got back a voucher(s) for the unused portion. <BR><BR>In other words, AA allows an open-jaw flight on its vouchers.

I'd call the airline and ask. Different airlines have different policies which seem to change daily. Also, I have noticed that frequent fliers with "premier" status, or whatever your FF club calls it, get more leway. <BR><BR>With UA I have "premeir" status because I racked up a bunch of miles in a short time flying for business. I can't believe how much more polite UA is to me now than previously. It's actually kind of funny.

American allows stopovers anywhere in the lower 48 states when using FF miles. For instance, we are going to Miami for two nights, then on to Mexico City for a week before returning to Chicago, all for 30,000 miles apiece.

Slabu-<BR>An open jaw itinerary is when you fly into one place, then return to your origin from another. What you're doing is a bit different, but you should have no problem with most of the online booking systems. They all offer an option for multiple destinations. <BR>Sometmes booking like this can be rather pricey, so you might want to check out other options, like two separate itineraries.