I missed the first half of a round trip from Houston to San Antonio because my flight from Pittsburg was cancelled. I got a direct flight from Pittsburg to San Antonio (my luggage OTOH, decided to see what Houston was like) so didn’t use the first half at all. Got to the airport to go home and found out my ticket was cancelled for the return trip because I hadn’t used the first half. 
Explained to the ticket person what happened and they let me on the flight, no problem.
Maybe I’m missing something, but why wouldn’t you buy the round trip ticket so that the first leg of the trip is the one you use and the second leg is the one that you abandon? The airline can’t charge you extra for not flying can they?
No, what happens with airline tickets is if a burger fries and soda together are cheaper than a burger and a soda separately. What the airlines do is to charge you for the separate meals if they see you buying all three and throwing away the fries.
If airline pricing was rational, there wouldn’t be a problem. And I do understand why it makes economic sense for them to do it - but it just encourages people to take advantage of the inherent absurdity of the pricing structure.
Southwest has three classes of fares, based on flexibility, and the policy that roundtrip is the sum of two one way fares. It is much less likely to be gamed in that respect. The airlines have every right to enforce their rules, but I don’t think looking for loopholes is improper or unethical.
I don’t see it that way at all. If I choose not to eat the burger (the first leg of the flight), I can still eat the fries (the second leg). If the airlines refuse to let me use the second leg because I did not use the first, THEY are the ones taking away the fries because I did not eat the burger. Even though I paid for them.
I think what you are talking about Voyager is if the one way ticket was more expensive to buy than a round trip ticket.
I don’t think anyone here is asking for a refund on the leg they did not use.
And In any case, If I don’t use the first half or the second half of the round trip, it could be used for standby (assuming I did not check in and board in time).
Shit I knew airline pricing was insane… but.
I just did a quick search on the same site.
Round trip Denver to Pittsburgh. $522
On way Pittsburgh to Denver $564
So, I understand the economic principle behind McDonald’s bundling items together into a “meal,” but what’s the rationale for the airlines to make the price for one way flights so prohibitive? Is there some reason why they want to discourage one way flights? How is this any different from McDonalds charging more for the small coke than for the large?
I don’t know that Southwest is any more rational about two legged trips than other airlines. I doubt it, since Oakland to Philly is quite cheap, due to competition. I also kind of see the problem with not using the second leg - but it isn’t a moral issue.
Another oddity we ran into was that a RT ticket went up dramatically in price after a one month stay. That I don’t get at all. I suspect that the reason for high one way fares is to keep people from buying one leg on airline A, and the return on airline B - or it might be just because those going one way don’t have a lot of options. When we moved to California from NJ we bought RTs. My wife and kids used the other leg (and came back on Southwest) but I think I tossed mine.
It’s rational for the airlines to try to maximize their revenue, but it is irrational for them to act like we are being immoral for trying to find ways for us to save money rather than them.
I wonder if it has something to do with scheduling.
Most people do need to return from their trip, and most people know when that is going to be. By buying a round trip ticket, the airline knows farther in advance from when and where at least half of their passengers are traveling.
:shrug: Just don’t get it. How on earth can they rationalize that a one way ticket to the same place on the same day costs MORE than a round trip ticket.
Just posting to say the same thing happened to me – Had a round trip ticket Seattle-Phoenix; missed my flight out due to a work emergency; took a later flight (they’re hourly between those destinations); came back to the PHX airport to fly home to find my ticket had been cancelled because I hadn’t used the first-half of the ticket.
I pointed out that I had used the first half of the ticket, just on a later flight, re-booked by them at a “re-booking fee” cost to me of 50 bucks, so they really weren’t in a position to say either (a) I hadn’t used the first half of the ticket or (b) they didn’t know about it. But it was very clear that if I had not actually flown the first half, the second half ticket would have been cancelled, period.
Could you try to explain what that may be?
They’d have to check for luggage. If the plane is a direct flight, with a stop, there are security issues. If the person had checked in, but not gotten on the second leg, I could see an airline wondering if something awful happened to them at the connecting terminal. I’d guess that most people doing this won’t announce it, for fear of getting yelled at by the airline, or worse, having their credit card charged for the leg they did take.
None of this applies for the one-way/round-trip issue.
I understand that completely. I thought we where discussing situations wherein the person doesn’t even show up at the airport, much less check in, and check their baggage but not get on.
??? Whenever I buy a round trip, I’m charged up front for all the legs of the flight. What the airline will do if you miss the first leg of the flight is re-sell your seat and make a double profit on it in the hopes that you are not intending to use the second leg either.
Not talking about getting refunds here. That’s a different issue.
The only time I’ve refused a job was when I interviewed for a position with a software company and they told me I’d be working on new “realtime price adjustment systems.” They proudly explained that it was their systems that adjusted airline prices on an hourly basis (and it’s more frequent than that now :eek:), to maximize profits. They explained that I’d be adapting the systems for things like car rentals, ski rentals, and possibly even theater tickets.
I told them that I found what they did abhorrent and I wouldn’t be a part of it.
As a consumer, I want to know what something costs, I want it to be reasonably consistent from day to day, and I want the cost to make some modicum of sense. Why would a round-trip from San Jose to Denver cost $550, when a round trip from San Jose to New York cost $99 and stopped over in Denver? That was the case a few years ago, and it made no sense to me.
I’m confused now. Are you talking about a two leg trip, A to B to C, and get off at B, and then you want to get back on at B for the return? Yeah, you never get on at C, but you have caused the problem I mentioned on the trip out, at B. If you are talking about booking a round trip ticket when you want to go one way, then there’s no problem.
Say you book SFO to PHL, changing at ORD. You really want to go to ORD. Say the fare from SFO to PHL, due to competition, is $150, while the fare to ORD is $250, and ORD to PHL is $150. My worry is that if you tell them you’re stopping travel in ORD, that there is some fine print in your contract to allow them to charge you the $250 that the leg was priced at taken by itself. No refund involved.
I doubt they’d even be able to resell the ORD to PHL seat, since there is no checking in for second legs except when you scan your boarding pass. They’d pretty much have to decide to bump you even if you showed up, and have someone sitting around on standby who didn’t leave when they said there was no room.
BTW, there has always been some oddities in pricing. When I lived in Princeton, I’d sometimes take a small plane from Newark to Princeton to avoid driving 50 miles to the airport. Once we decided to go somewhere, and my wife picked me up at Newark, so I didn’t use the ticket. When I tried to get money back for it (this was before penalties) I discovered that there was a connecting flight discount that was greater than the price of the Newark to Princeton ticket - so I was actually saving my company money by taking this extra flight. In the good old days, no airline would have tried to get it back.
I’m am talking strictly the round trip deal. I know a few others in this thread have talked about a,b,c.
If for instance, you decided to not use the too destination part of the ticket, it sounds like the return part is automatically canceled.
Corporate Travel Agent speaking.
it’s not immoral and it’s not against the law, but they own the airplanes and they get to make the rules.
The one way costs much more partly because the last mintue purchases tend to be the business traveller who has no choice (in order to make a meeting) and an expense account, so they have that person by the short hairs and can charge what they want.
The leisure traveller has more time to plan and usually more flexibility so they offer those previously mentioned discounts, in order to encourage them to buy now.
If you buy a round trip from LAX to NYC then don’t board at LAX, because you are really in NYC and just want to save money, they’ll assume you are trying to be sneaky and cancel your entire trip. This forces you to buy the more expensive one-way ticket from NYC to LAX, which is what you needed in the first place.
Not all airlines prices are structured this way, but many are. It’s complicated.
I think the scenario boils down to this:
You want to fly from A to B, but a one-way ticket is very expensive. A round trip ticket from A to B and back to A is quite a bit cheaper, and you could fly on the first half and throw away the second half.
BUT… a round trip ticket from B to A and back to B is even cheaper, for some reason, but the airlines won’t let you use the second half if you didn’t use the first half.
Are RT fares from NYC to LAX and returning significantly different from thoseNot all airlines prices are structured this way, but many are. It’s complicated. from LAX to NYC? I was thinking about boarding at NYC, going to LAX on a RT fare, and then never going back. I never imagined RT fares between two cities would be asymmetric. Are they really?
The problem with the current system is that it forces business travelers to act like leisure travelers to save money. I assume your company has lowest fare guidelines, and audits travelers? I’ve definitely gotten fares that are as good as I get when I book for personal travel.
The real problem is that the airlines are going to have a hard time convincing people that it is reasonable for one way fares to be more expensive than RT ones. The only similar situation I can think of is a sale that makes bigger products cheaper than smaller sizes for a week, (absolutely, not unit priced) but that is pretty rare and temporary.
Correct, you can usually buy a round trip ticket from A to B to A, fly A to B, then throw out the return portion. At most times, there’s nothing the airline can do.
However, the return portion will have no value if not rescheduled within the amount of time, specified by the fare rules, for the same rouring, depending on fare rules.
It’s all up to the fare rules for that particular fare, as mentioned earlier. There’s no one all-encompassing rule.