Pawleys

Trying to book a flight on US Air to Turks. Was thinking about using Frequent flyers for the trip; but, none are available for the departing flight. So I thought I would purchase the outgoing leg and use points for the return; but, the website is showing me $75 more for the one way ticket than the round trip would be. Can this be true???

Jimingso

Yes it can be true. I also believe that you will use up the same amount of miles on a one-way booking as a R/T. I may be wrong but the last time I checked, you couldn't use 1/2 of an award.

RoamsAround

Simple answer - Yes, one way fares (usually unrestricted, fully refundable) can sometimes cost more that a "restricted non-refundable r/t excursion fare.

suze

Yes

daveesl

As to the cost, in many, but not all cases a one-way ticket will cost the same or more than a RT. Instances where this would not be the case would be with point-to-point carriers, such as Southwest, RyanAir, EasyJet, etc.

As to the miles, I know of no mileage program (except SW) that allows you to only get one leg of a trip for less miles than an entire RT. The other trick to this is that it is advisable, if only doing the return leg with miles, to book the RT flight with your actual return leg showing as the initial leg of the mileage trip. The reason for this is that if you mile-buy a RT flight and only try to use the return leg, you may well find that your reservation was cancelled since you did not fly on the outbound portion of the ticket.

I know, none of this makes any sense at all, with one exception...the airline gets to charge twice for a seat if you don't use one leg. The airlines know that most people understand that a one-way will cost more than a RT, so people buy the RT, regardless of using it or not. Say a flight from MCO to CDG is $1,000 RT ($500/leg) and the same if someone wanted to do the reverse - CDG to MCO. You only want to go to CDG and they only want to go to MCO. The two of you spent $2,000 for the 4 flight legs, but only 2 were actually used. Thus the airline made an extra $1,000.

Not fair, but it is what it is.

dave

akchauhan

Yes, one way fare can sometimes cost more that a "restricted non-refundable r/t excursion fare.

qwovadis

almost always true buy the cheaper RT fare throw

the return away best fares cheapoair.com kayak.com/buzz

and for Carib for me

www.spirit.com amazing econo values out of FLL for me

TC

Are you sure you can get a one-way FF ticket? Some airlines won't let you do that either. Everything is RT.

Be careful with the "throw away" option. Technically its illegal and the airline computers are pretty darned good at sniffing out double bookings and cancelling one. You could find yourself with no FF return ticket at the last minute and be forced to purchase another one-way ticket to get home.

daveesl

That was what I was getting at when using FF to go one-way. Say you want to go from San Juan to Miami, but are first taking a ship from Miami to San Juan. The way you need to book your FF ticket is to go RT San Juan-Miami-San Juan. You then use the first leg of the flight (which is actually the second leg of the trip) and not use the second leg of the flight. And yes, if you tried to do it the other way (Miami-San Juan-Miami), then you have a pretty good chance of having the entire flight cancelled, since you did not take the originating leg.

Some airlines do allow you to book one-way with FF miles, but in MOST cases you have to call it in and you will use as many miles as a RT flight.

dave