Why do airlines charge more for one-way tickets than for a round trip?

Factual Questions
1

Airlines baffle me. A number of times now I have flown one way between destinations, sometimes domestically in the United States and sometimes internationally. I have always found that the cost of a one-way ticket is more than the cost of a round trip ticket (n which I just skip out on the return trip.

What possible advantage for the airline can there be in fooling themselves that I am going to be on a flight that I have no intention of taking? If money is the issue, I can see charging the same amount for a one-way ticket as for a round-trip, but charging more? It makes no sense to me. The airline is holding up a perfectly good seat they could otherwise sell for more money.

In this day and age of charging fees for luggage, meals, soft drinks, and even pillows and blankets, you’d think the airlines would long ago have wised up on their ticket pricing policies.

Enlighten me, oh teeming millions.

--Stephen
2

Encouraging you to return on the same airline. it’s cheaper for you to buy a return ticket on the same airline than it is to buy two one way tickets for potentially separate carriers.

3

Because a round trip ticket is two sales and a one way ticket is one sell. Ever hear of a “Two for one sale” in a store.

Furthermore very few people only fly one way. Therefore a round trip represents a seat taken both ways.

Many airlines will charge you extra if you don’t show up for your return trip. They will simply up adjust the cost and bill your credit card. Of course you can simply just cancel your credit card saying it was stolen so the bill can’t charged but then you risk being put on an airlines “no fly list” till you agree to pay. Round trip tickets often say on them, you must pay the difference if you don’t actually fly both ways.

4

Hi guys,

Thanks for the time you have taken to answer my question. Your answers are useless, but I appreciate them all the same.

Guanolad, your said that it’s cheaper to buy a return ticket on the same airline than it is to buy two one-way tickets for potentially separate carriers.

That may be true, but I do not intend to return on any airline so your argument doesn’t apply.

I’m talking about customers, like myself, that want to take a one-way trip only. The airline can simply charge the -same- price for one-way and round trip tickets, thereby rendering no financial incentive to take a different airline home, but at the same time freeing up the seat on the return flight to sell to someone else.
KRSOradio, with all due respect for the time you spent answering my inquiry, I think you’re off in Looneytown. I am not aware of the slightest evidence to support your claim that an airline will bill me for extra money if I don’t show up for the return flight.

If you can provide a link to any major United States airline’s policy that states they’ll bill you for the difference if you don’t show up for the return flight I’ll gladly eat crow here on the forums. I don’t believe such a policy exists though. It may in other countries, but in the USA? No way.

As for your idea that I cancel my credit card and say it was stolen, that’s absolutely loopy. A traveler has to produce their photo ID when checking into a flight. There is absolutely no way they could argue that the ticket was charged without their knowledge when they showed up to take the first half of the trip!
Again, I ask the teeming millions if they can answer my question. I’m paying $1000 for a round-trip ticket to London later this month, for which I won’t be using the return flight. Had I bought a one-way ticket to London instead, it would have cost me $1200. What possible advantage can there be for the airline to reserve a seat on a flight that I have no intention of ever taking.

Thanks,

--Stephen
5

The answer is very simple. Very few people want a one-way ticket. Round-trip tickets are extremely competitive among airlines and they have lots of manpower and computers in place to adjust prices in real-time because that is what most people care about. They don’t do the same with one-way tickets because they are rare and it isn’t worth their while. They know that some people will just buy a round-trip ticket and not use the second part. Contrary to what was mentioned earlier, there are lots of reasons people might do that and it is not a sin to them. They won’t charge your credit card extra for it.

6

I have to disagree with the “They will simply up adjust the cost and bill your credit card.” statement.

I have bought round trip tickets LOTS of times and not used the return portion. I never had any charges made to my credit card, never had my frequent flyer account penalized, or anything.

I don’t do this a lot, and there is a valid reason when I have to do it, so I don’t abuse the system by trying to save a few dollars.

I don’t have any love for the airlines, but just because they CAN do something doesn’t always mean that they WILL. (Surprisingly)

However, I can’t really give a concrete reason why they charge so much more for a one way ticket. I read a funny article years ago titled something like “If They Sold Paint Like The Airlines Sold Tickets.” Hilarious. (“Well, sir, the price depends on whether or not you are going use the WHOLE gallon or just half of it…”; “Are you painting your house over the weekend or are you doing it during the week?”)

7

I know this doesn’t help you with your London ticket, but Southwest airlines actually has halfway sensible ticketing policies. You purchase each leg of your journey, not a “round trip” ticket, so a one-way is half the price of a round trip. They also don’t charge you or make you jump through insane hoops to change or cancel your ticket if you need to. We always fly southwest if at all possible, just because our plans sometimes change and I don’t like being penalized for it. I believe they are also one of the only airlines actually making money lately, so perhaps others should look at their business models.

8

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that in those cases when one-way tickets do cost substantially more than a round trip, they aren’t strictly equivalent. The round trip will come with many more restrictions. For example, the one way ticket will often be refundable, while the round trip ticket is not.

If you were to buy a round trip ticket with exactly the same lack of restrictions as the one way ticket, it would typically cost twice the one way fare.

Ed

9

I’ve bought return trip tickets on quite a few occasions with no intention of using the return portion. I’ve never been charged any extra.

10

To be fair, they are making money because they were smarter at hedging fuel prices than any other airline, but I totally agree that Southwest is about the only airline with a rational ticket purchasing policy. And no ripoff charges for bags, soda, or pillows either.

11

The advantage is that there are many people that don’t care to look for a cheaper way to fly, and will just pay the difference for the sake of flexibility. Often time, these are business travelers who care far less than leisure travelers spending their own money. The same price curiosities occur often when people see they can get a cheaper flight to a by arranging for their layover city to be their actual destination.

ie. Newark ----> Atlanta ----> Orlando = $150
Newark ----> Atlanta = $175

As this site explains:

So basically, they can screw enough people to make it worth it to them because most people buy one-way tickets due to an unusual circumstance. Their circumstance can be exploited in many cases for profit. Pretty simple really.

12

I don’t know if the airlines actually try to charge people more for only using the first half of a round-trip ticket, but the idea was to cancel your credit card after the first half of the trip to prevent the airlines from charging you additional money. The part about saying that your card was stolen is simply the rationale for canceling the card. Nobody is saying that their card was stolen before the trip.

So, the sequence would be:

  1. Purchase round-trip ticket with credit card.
  2. Take one-way trip.
  3. Cancel card to prevent any further charges by airline, not to dispute the original charge in step 1.

I never worry about any of this, though, because I fly Southwest, where every ticket is a one-way ticket. :slight_smile: When my father got seriously ill last year, I bought a one-way ticket, because I didn’t know when I would be returning, for example. After his funeral ( :frowning: ), I bought another ticket for the trip home.

13

I would disagree with the extent to which one way travel is insanely more expensive than round trip travel in domestic air travel. When I tried to buy a one way ticket the day of from Denver to Pittsburgh on Tuesday morning, the one-way price was $233 and the round trips were all at least $600. I think that the major domestics have generally adopted one-way pricing tickets the same as Jet-Blue or Southwest, although they will still cancel your return leg if you no-show for the outbound leg, unlike Southwest and Jet-Blue.

One place where that bromide is definitely still true is in international travel. As I understand it, the airline that takes you to a country is responsible for taking you back home if the country you’re visiting decides not to let you in, grant a tourist visa, etc. They often do this because you don’t have a return flight booked. So, the airline is essentially insuring itself against the added risk of having to stuff you into first class or whatever else seat happens to be available for the return flight home after the destination country rejects you.

Just my experience from a decent amount of price research on airline tickets, although I’m sure I don’t travel as often as someone with the username LivesOnAPlane.

14

:dubious:

15

Agreed, people just see the price, not the fare class.

They also very rarely put one-way tickets on sale, so you’re comparing a sale price to a full price.

16

American Airlines’ Conditions of Carriage specifically prohibits “throwaway ticketing”, and the airline reserves the right to bill the passenger for the difference in fares.

[quote]
American specifically prohibits the practices commonly known as:

Back to Back Ticketing: The combination of two or more roundtrip excursion fares end to end for the purpose of circumventing minimum stay requirements.

Throwaway Ticketing: The usage of roundtrip excursion fare for one-way travel, and

Hidden City/Point Beyond Ticketing: Purchase of a fare from a point before the passenger’s actual origin or to a point beyond the passenger’s actual destination.

Where a ticket is invalidated as the result of the passenger’s non-compliance with any term or condition of sale, American has the right in its sole discretion to:[ol][li]Cancel any remaining portion of the passenger’s itinerary,[]Confiscate unused flight coupons,[]Refuse to board the passenger or check the passenger’s luggage, or[*]Assess the passenger for the reasonable remaining value of the ticket, which shall be no less than the difference between the fare actually paid and the lowest fare applicable to the passenger’s actual itinerary[/ol][/li][/quote]
Whether or not they will actually carry out this threat is another question - it appears that they frequently do not. American is simply the first airline I searched at; I would be very surprised if all or most other airlines don’t have similarly-worded conditions, as well.

17

Is this for domestic flights or transatlantic flights or what? Most of the flights I take are one-way. I fly all over the country buying cars and I drive them back.

I’ve mostly flown one-way with Southwest, Jet Blue and United.

In each case, there’s no (or little) difference between one-way and round trip pricing.

To verify this, I just went to Southwest and priced a round trip flight from New Orleans to New York (Islip) and the price is $410.00. The one way tickets, to and from are $205.00 each, all taxes & fees included. (These are the cheapest flights, leave on Sept 7, return on Sept 8, both early a.m.).

Through JetBlue, the same date and roughly the same time, MSY to JFK and back…round trip is $249 and each one way is $124.50.

United is a little different. Round trip, same time and date, MSY to JFK is $596.00. One way, MSY to JFK, same flight #s is $440. One way, JFK to MSY, same flight #s is $170. You save $14.00 by booking the round trip, rather than two one-way flights.

In any of these cases, it would not be beneficial to buy a round trip ticket and not use the return portion.

18

Well I’ll be! I just checked the policies for Continental and sure enough, the earlier fellow was right and not loopy like I said. Continental does reserve the right to charge you the difference if you throw away the return trip ticket and just fly one-way.

(5 minute break while I eat my shorts as promised)

Okay, I’m back. Damn they tasted bad.

Summarizes the messages so far, it seems a one-way ticket might cost more because:

- It is a less restrictive ticket.

That makes sense. Less restrictive tickets would naturally cost more. Although it baffles me why the airlines aren’t selling equally restrictive one-way tickets for, oh, say, 70% of the round-trip cost.
- The airline is hedging itself against having to fly you back in case your passport is rejected.

This happened to a friend of mine when he bought a one-way ticket to the UK. They accused him of trying to move there illegally because he brought so much luggage.

But this doesn’t explain why it would cost -more- for a one-way than a round-trip. After all, only a very small percentage are going to be rejected and have to be flown back. So raising the cost of a one-way ticket by a small percentage would easy pay for this. Not the humongous percentage to make the one-way tickets to London cost 20% more than the round-trip ticket.

- The airline is trying to sell the one-way tickets to business travelers who are willing to pay more.

Mmmm, I’ll buy this one a bit. Business travelers are equally capable of buying round-trip tickets and not showing up for the return trips.

As a side note, the statement was made that business travelers are those that tend to fly one-way. I’d want to see some evidence before I agree with this, as I was thinking it was the other way around.
Anyway, that’s the three main arguments I’m seeing so far. Did I miss anything?

19

I always thought a big part of it was to encourage complete itineraries. Airlines make bank by charging more to business travellers, but the only way they “know” who’s a business traveller is via the itinerary. Round trip Monday to Friday = business = $$$$. Round trip Friday to Monday = visit to Auntie’s house = $$. If one-way tickets were priced at half round-trip costs, passengers would all look the same, which would hurt the airlines’ bottom lines.

20

(Note to self: If you drink, don’t post; if you post, don’t drink!)

I meant to say something like "It’s a small percentage of my tickets, but still a goodly number…