Something tells me this has been posted before, but the search engine takes forever.
Seems that most of the time I can get a round trip flight cheaper than I can a one way.
Not just cheaper than buying two one ways, that makes perfect sense, but actually cheaper than buying a single one way ticket.
Can anyone explain this?
Just a WAG:
One-ways probably cost more they’re closer to full-fare which is insanely expensive (~$1000 each way for a cross-country coach ticket). Normally for round-trip, you almost never pay that price (unless you’re buying a last minute ticket for a quick business trip) because flights are bundled together and given discount rates.
I would guess that one-way tickets are rare and thus less likely to be discounted, meaning you’ll pay a rate much closer to that full $1000.
Err… “One-ways probably cost more BECAUSE they’re closer to full-fare…”
Hmm, still scratching my head. Maybe you could explain it differently. Sure one way tickets are rare.Why would anyone buy them? I buy two way tickets even if I don’t plan on going back.
I understand the discount. But why would you sell me two apples for less than buying 1?
Because you’re getting a discount for making two flights at once (1 out, 1 back)
Oh… Should have read the OP closer.
The airlines want to charge business travellers more than tourists. They “tell” you’re a tourist if you book a round trip ticket with a Saturday stay. Anything else and you’re a “business traveller” and they think they’ve got you by the short hairs and charge you accordingly.
There’s a sneaky technique out there for getting cheaper business tickets. The airlines even have a name for it, but I don’t recall it. It goes like this:
Say I want to fly from San Jose to New York on Tuesday the 10th, then fly back on a Thursday the 12th. As SingleDad noted, the airlines recognize this intra-week trip as a business trip and charge a high price, typically triple (or more) the cost of a weekend stay.
So, what you do is book two round trip flights like this:
NY->SJ Fri the 6th returning Tue the 10th
SJ->NY Thu the 12th returning Mon the 16th
Now, you throw away the two outside tickets, and you’ve beaten them. And if you can sell the end tickets to someone going the other way, you’re even better off.
As I say, the airlines actively watch for this technique, so I’m not sure how easy it is to actually pull it off.
I’d guess that the one-way fares are just neglected. They don’t bother to discount them and don’t care if you buy them because it’s not worth their effort for the few people who actually want them.
So why don’t they just make them at least as cheap as the round-trip fare? That’s probably more complicated than it’s worth since they’re not losing anything if you just buy the round-trip ticket (they overbook the flights, so that seat you didn’t use will get filled anyway), whereas they might gain a buck if you’re naive and pay the one-way fare. 
billiehunt,
For some reason I remember that being of questionable legality, though every company I’ve ever worked for has done it that way. Also, if you’re flying back and forth every week, they’ll just stagger the tickets like this:
NY->SJ - Mon the 3rd to Friday the 14th
SJ->NY - Fri the 7th to Monday the 10th
That way, every ticket has a Saturday night stay. Basically, you’re flying out for 2 weeks but making a mini-trip back over the weekend.
meara, Ok I see a logic operating here. But as slim as the competition is for one way customers it doesn’t seem that slim. It seems to me that there must be some underlying cost in the one way ticket.
There’s not a lot of competition in my neighborhood to sell milk so my convenience store can charge more for a quart of milk, but its not going to sell me a gallon for less than it sells a quart (even though most people don’t want a whole gallon from a convenience store).
If you can think of any other industries that work this way it might help me to understand.
Sorry SingleDad, I should have thought of a better subject line (makes me look a little brain dead).Thanks for reading on
Other examples:
Mc-Donald’s - The extra value meal is cheaper than the burger and fries alone, which means you’re better off getting it that way even if you don’t want a drink
Grocery Store - There are always plenty of bulk-items on sale for less than a smaller size, but here’s something I see every other week: 6-packs of soda cost more than 12-packs. The 6-pack price is set at $2.89 and never changes. However, the 12-packs often go on sale for $2.00. I’ve always found it ridiculous that I’d have to pay 89 cents more to get half the cans.
Gas: Lots of gas stations have weekly sales on premium gas that actually bring the price of 93 octane fuel below the price of 89 octane.
Gym Memberships: My husband and I pay $33/month for our gym membership, which is less than what most single people are paying at the same gym. We just happened to get a great package deal for married couples with a particular insurance.
There are also plenty of instances where a single quanitity of something costs nearly as much or as much as a double (half cartons of eggs, hotel rooms, small containers of sour cream, YMCA memberships, etc.)
All in all, of course it’s illogical, but it seems that consistency is not always worth the effort when the volume is low. Why pay high-priced lawyers to write up rules for a special one-way fare and take the time to program it into the system if only a tiny fraction of your customers are ever going to use it? It may be more cost-effective to just leave one-way prices at the highest fare and let frugal passengers use half a round-trip ticket.
Meara, believe it or not I’m still not convinced I have the full answer. I don’t eat McDonald’s very much (I"m a vegetarian) so I can’t quote the prices on their burger meal deal. However, the last time I did buy one of those (the fish sandwich,I was weaker then)I figured out I was getting the soft drink for about an extra 15 cents. But even if the meal was cheaper than the burger and fries, it would still be enticing you to spend more than if you just got the burger. If there were three-way tickets it might make a better analogy.
I’ve never seen the bulk items for less than the individual items in the same store (where do you shop?!).
As for the sodas, those are specials designed around holidays where people don’t want smaller portions. Those are seasonal events based on times when people consume in bulk.I don’t think it would be good for their profit margin to operate at those prices normally. If people never wanted six packs (like one way tickets) then it seem to me that the price of six packs would drop or they would just stop selling them all together.
If pricing one way tickets is a hassle, why even have them? If there’s money to be made off of ripping people off why isn’t there more competition?
You seem to have explained a fairly good principal, I don’t expect you to know the ins and outs of airline pricing but it still seems pretty unique and bizarre to me.
Okay… here’s my last shot.
On top of the fact that one-way tickets are rare and not worth accomodating, let’s add in the competition factor.
It’s very rare that a person is making a true one-way trip (i.e. relocating). More likely, the traveller is either flying to multiple cities, or is (GASP!) returning on a different airline.
The airlines don’t want you flying anyone else, even if they get the full round-trip fare from you, because you will develop an affinity to the other airline. Therefore, they leave one-way tickets at full-fare to discourage it. Of course, along with keeping tourists from airline-hopping this policy has the added bonus of ripping off business travellers who have tight schedules to be kept and can’t use the bundled flights.
This is a lot like the cases where it’s more expensive to fly from New York to Cincinnati than it is to fly from New York to Chicago THROUGH Cincinnati (tempting travellers to book the latter flight and get off at the stopover).
So why aren’t budget airlines springing up to fill this one-way demand? Well… it’s possible that some (like America West, ugh) are, but again we return to the volume issue. Is it worthwhile to pursue that market when the demand is so low and you could make more money just ripping them off.
You could earn a pilot’s license and fly yourself. 
Often, you can get to a destination faster in a 130 mph Cessna than you can in a 500 mph transport. Plus you don’t have hassles with parking, security, and someone-else’s schedule. Leave and return whenever you want. Of course, it’ll cost you about $1.50/mile.
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
Are you a turtle?
I did some digging on the web and came up with this.
Reading between the lines, it appears to me that the big difference is the fact that, generally speaking, one-way fares are almost always unrestricted, whereas the round-trip prices you are comparing them to are fares with numerous restrictions.
One-way fares are usually used by business travelers who are unsure of their return dates and who don’t mind paying full price. There is no strong demand for one-way tickets by leisure travelers, so there’s not much incentive to offer discount one-way tickets. If you compare the unrestricted one-way fare and the unrestricted round-trip fare, you’ll probably find that the one-way ticket is about 50% or so of the round-trip fare.
Billehunt said:
Travel agents call this “open jaw” ticketing, aand it’s techincally illegal. If you read the Terms of Carriage on the back of your ticket, you’ll find that you agree not to do this by purchasing the ticket.
Airlines will prevent you from doing this sort of thing because if you don’t check in for the first leg of the ticketed flight, they’ll assume you’re not showing and will cancel the remainder of the ticket. Open-jaw ticketing can work if your want to skip the last legs of the flight, since you won’t care if the airline cancels those legs when you don’t check in, but it complicates baggage checking and frequent flier programs. (Airlines usually won’t let you check bags to an intermediate stop and then reclaim them.)
Phooey. I’ll have to learn how to do URLs a little better. Here’s the link that should’ve been there:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/travel/Crabby/oneway.html
What’s the big question? If you buy one soda it costs more per soda than if you bought a case.
‘Now, you throw away the two outside tickets, and you’ve beaten them. And if you can
sell the end tickets to someone going the other way, you’re even better off.’
haha, nope. That ticket is a CONTRACT that you’ll be on their plane. If you don’t show up to fulfil your part of the contract, the airline knows. Some of them keep track of no shows & some don’t. Also if you don’t show for one part of the trip, they can & do cancel the rest of the trip. Yes, they keep track if you don’t show up for that last part of the trip too.
m3, let me see if I can cut through for you (this is really a rehash of SingleDad’s post:
Airlines realize that they can charge Businesses more than Consumers because Businesses are ultimately more willing to pay.
The algorithm that Airlines use to determine if you are Business is: watch for round-trip tickets within the same week, typically made with short notice. For those types of tickets, Airlines charge a premium because they know they’ll get it.
For other tickets, the Airline figures the customer is a Consumer and much more price-sensative. And charges appropriately.
Here’s another comparison. Try to go to a subway and just buy a loaf of bread. They’ll roll their eyes and moan and tell you the reason they have to charge you for a sandwich is because they compare sales to leftover loaves. This is obviously something any manager that passed the elementery math test on the back of the application could handle, but it’s inconvenient and not enough desperate people show up at Subway needing bread to change the system.
The airline operates similarly. They package your tickets with all kinds of discounts which are tracked to different types of passengers (business/tourist or 1st class/cattle) and to thier routes and peak days (spring break packages, etc.) If you want to do something that doesn’t allow them to package you as a spring break tourist or a business traveler, or a 12" meatball sub, then they can’t (i.e. won’t) fit you into any of the discounts.
Obviously, this presents certain problems to a certain class of ‘fly by night’ traveller, and if there were enough people clamoring for friendly skies or freedom to move about the country, then someone would show up to accommodate them. Especially if they were more of a competitive industry than they are.