Last year, I needed a roundtrip ticket for my daughter, A-to-C and C-to-A. I noticed that the flight A-to-C stopped along the way in B, where a relative lives; it might be nice to holiday there for a few days. No problem, Delta would sell me A-to-B-to-C-to-A for only a little more than the A-to-C-to-A roundtrip.
BUT, I got to thinking. What if my daughter accompanied my relative on a scenic road trip for the B-to-C leg, or if a different destination got inserted? (In the event, my daughter ended up flying cross-country to NYC in between B & C.) We’d be happy to throw away the B-to-C ticket, but would that even be allowed? I called Delta back to be sure about the ticket.
Good thing I did. Had my daughter missed the B-to-C leg, she would not have been allowed to board the plane for the C-to-A return; she’d have needed to buy a new ticket. :eek: So, we ended up buying A-to-B and C-to-A tickets for roughly the same price as an A-to-C-to-A ticket.
Check your credit card issuer, and see if there if trip interruption insurance automatically provided if you pay with the card. If you have a covered reason (illness, for example) the insurance will cover any part of the ticket paid for that can’'t be used. It will also cover any fees charged by the airline for the schedule change.
But, of course, you need a legitimate reason for cancelling your flight, supported by documentation.
But, just in case, I always make sure my tickets are paid for on a credit card that includes travel interruption insurance. And I have successfully made a claim in the past.
I have the exact same exact feelings about airlines and airports. As well as about Lufthansa. Strange coincidence, unless I’m schizophrenic and wrote the above post as well.
I remember reading about such pricing shenanigans years ago, and I thought they changed the pricing rules so that stuff doesn’t happen anymore. Am I wrong?
Usually, I fly on Alaska Airline. On Alaska, a round trip ticket costs exactly the same price as two one-way tickets. Same goes for Delta, American, and United. What airline are you looking at, bardos? I can’t find a single one that sells round-trip tickets for less than the cost of two one-way tickets. Perhaps the rules are different in the USA?
P.S. I’m well aware that a ticket from A to B to C to D might cost less money than a ticket from B to C, but that’s not what’s being discussed here. We’re asking can you buy a ticket from A to B to A for less money than just A to B.
Not looking at one specific airline. The itinerary is Madrid to Hawaii, usually involving three different flights and many, many hours of airplane insult.
I just tried a couple searches on Google’s ITA software. One proposed route was from Madrid to Dallas to Honolulu. When I broke it down for each leg, I found that going one way from Dallas to Honolulu was only $100 more than half the round trip price. But when I checked the leg from Madrid to Dallas, suddenly the price of a one-way ticket is FIVE TIMES the price of a round trip ticket.
This suggests that the pricing rules are different with tickets on routes which are outside the USA. And here I had assumed that the rest of the world was experiencing the same sanity that I see whenever I buy a plane ticket. Huh. Ignorance fought. Perhaps your best strategy would be to spend as large a fraction of the trip as possible within the USA. Take the cheapest round trip flight from Madrid to anywhere in America and then take a one-way ticket from there, on another airline.
Back to your question though, I’m confident the airline won’t refund anything for your failure to use the return leg of the ticket. In fact, I bet they’d charge you a penalty if they could figure out some way to make you pay it.
I’ve always been a bit mystified by the concept of advance check-in; I mean, how can you check in when you’re not in, yet? Even if you’re not deliberately messing with the airline, some number of people must check in the day before and get in an accident on the way to the airport or something.
I don’t actually know, but I would assume it’s a statistical win for them. They save X man hours and get screwed at some (probably) very low rate, .00Y Savings of X > cost of .00Y
That said, I do love advance check in because it eliminates 30 minutes I have to account for at the airport, because every once in a while the wait to check in is long, and I can’t risk it.
My absolute most hated was USAir, and I used to avoid them if at all possible. I have been screwed by them too many times, including one night on the floor of an airport when they should have known that was going to happen, and should have stopped me from leaving that day in the first place. The other issue is the one million times I have had flights delayed or cancelled through Philly. Once, my flight into PHL was late so they moved me to a later second leg flight. My initial flight had a delay in getting the crew, and so I could have made it onto that one easily, but they wouldn’t let me change back even though it was still at the gate. Then the later flight they put me on got CANCELLED!
This suggestion rates a gold star and an employee of the month award. Oops, I mean poster of the month award.
I have checked and the savings are substantial when travelling this way. The only misgiving is a night that has to be spent in an airport hotel… now looking for a cheap one. Seems like the cheapest is around $100 per night.
What are you finding? If you’re OK with dropping the return leg and booking multiple itineraries I see $387 for Madrid to Vancouver (via Amsterdam on KLM) and then $294 Vancouver to Honolulu direct on Air Canada for a total of $681. That’s about half the cost of what I’m seeing if you just punch in MAD to HNL round trip.
Timing can be a huge deal. We vacation in January each year and usually book our flight in October. One year I was looking at flights and saw an amazingly great deal. I didn’t get around to discussing the flight with my gf until the next day, but by then the price had increased substantially.
You used to be able to game the system somewhat. Back in 2000 or so I had a job where I had to fly to the same city for 6 months. Every week out on Monday and back on Friday. Every trip was expensive because there was no Saturday stay. So I booked a single round trip ticket out on Monday and back on Friday six months from then, and then booked individual round trip tickets from the destination city out on Friday, back on Monday. Saturday stay over, every week, and a huge savings, over ten thousand dollars in total.
Why? Who knows? An airline seat is not a fungible product, it has a different value to everyone on the plane, and the airlines have figured out how to maximize profit by charging different groups of people different prices. Business travelers are willing to pay more to not lose part of the weekend, so forcing people to stay over Saturday to get a lower price lets those travelers sort themselves out.