I was checking out prices for an upcoming trip I want to make and I found a flight out that I wanted and a flight back that I wanted. I can book them as one-way flights, but I can’t book it as a round-trip.
The flight out is Delta. The flight back Midwest. Obviously, they are different airlines, but there are other mixed-airline round-trips that I can book, including round-trips that include each of these airlines (though I didn’t see any that included the pair of them).
What gives?
(If anyone feels like playing around with it, I’ll happily provide details.)
They do not have this round-trip. Yes, the flights exist. Like I said, I can book them as one-way flights, just not as a round-trip, though it usually (in my experience) costs more to book two one-ways than one round-trip.
Yes, and sometimes it can cost more to book one one-way than a round-trip.
I suspect your problem has something to do with code sharing. The two airlines may code share on some flights but not on one or both of these particular flights. If that is the case, then from the individual airlines perspectives you are booking a one-way ticket on their airline and completing the “round-trip” on another airline has nothing to do with them, hence no round-trip discount.
Ah, Baracus, that’s what I wondered–if the airlines had special agreements among themselves.
I can’t look it up from here, so I can’t report what the prices are for the one-way flights. I was more interested in why it wasn’t available as a round-trip.
Give Farecast (now Microsoft Bing) a try, and see if the flight shows up.
It is likely that there is no code sharing agreement of any kind between these two airlines. I believe that means there will be no price advantage to attempting to book this in a round trip fashion. The best you could probably do is find a third party booking site that fakes it with two separate reservations.
Thanks, Driver8, for introducing me to Bing’s flight search. I like being able to rule out redeyes (tried them twice and regretted it both times).
It must be the code sharing thing. Thanks for fighting my ignorance. I have plenty of time to book it since I’m thinking of traveling in September, so I’ll take a look at one-way and other options.
I apologize for the hijack, but since BMalion self-identified as a travel agent, I thought I’d take advantage and see if he can explain the logic behind the situation I posted to the current mini-rants thread in the Pit a few days back:
SY, Your Greensboro/Charlotte is a common phenomena in the airline industry. I used to fly out Jackson, MS because it was almost always cheaper than flying out Memphis. But all the NW flights connected through Memphis.
the airports were pretty close in distance away from home, but I had to leave home earlier to catch the flights out of Jackson.
I did “cheat” the system a couple of times. On the return trip, I would just leave the Memphis airport. My girlfriend would meet me there. Of course that only works if you don’t park your car in Jackson MS and do not check your baggage.
I still don’t understand. Expedia should be smart enough to figure this out and price and book your requested flights as two one-way legs, rather than just telling you it can’t be done. Why won’t it?
The pricing matrix of the airlines was designed by the same people who hid secret codes in the design of the dollar bill.
The convoluted reasoning behind why a multi-stop itinerary would be cheaper than a simple round-trip is basically that the airlines want to increase seat occupancy on certain routes at different times to maximize profits. They have a vast system in place that is supposed to factor in thousands of data points to caculate fares. The fact that almost all airlines except Southwest are losing money shows how well this system works. It also explains how the price of air travel flucuates like the stock market.
I’ve long ago given up trying to understand the logic behind this.