Downside to different airline on return?
 

Three of us are flying ORD/MCO in Jan and I am finding AA with the most convenient outbound flight and UA inbound is cheaper than AA. Roundtrip costs are $346pp for AA/AA and $290pp for AA/UA at a savings of $56pp ($168 total). Are there any downsides I'm not thinking of to flying 2 different airlines?

Who are you booking the fare with? AA, or a third party site? Can you find the same fare booking as one-way on each airline's website?

rkkwan, fares are taken off AA and UA websites as one-way fares, not from a third party site. I generally prefer flying the same airline if flying RT, but this seems to be a substantial savings.

The main thing I can think of would be flying on two one way tickets - and the extra scrutiny that can bring at security - but if you plan for more time at the airport, shouldn't be a problem

The TSA consideration is a non-starter: they no longer pay attention to people who have domestic one-way tickets, primarily for exactly the reason the OP is considering buying them (that is, in many markets, there's no price advantage to buying a round-trip ticket).

The only real advantage of putting both outbound and return flights on the same ticket is to provide a way out of one flight if something happens with the other. For example, suppose you had a short trip planned, and the airline on the outbound flight changed schedules (or dropped the route entirely), and you couldn't find an acceptable alternative outbound flight. If it's all on one ticket, you could cancel both flights and get your money back in full. On separate tickets, you'd be out of luck.

As a practical matter, though, that type of issue is much more of a problem on routes where there might only be 1 or 2 flights/day, and not on the Chicago-Orlando route where you have a zillion choices.

I see no issues. Does anybody really have 1st hand experience of extra scrutiny at security from a 1 way ticket?

Are these in fact (2) one-way tickets?

The OP doesn't say that. They talk about "round trip" but on two different carriers.

Yes, ovenbird said "fares are taken off AA and UA websites as one-way fares... "

J62 - I do have experience with added security on a one-way ticket but admittedly it was out of DCA - where they tend to be more nervous :) Probably not a good comparison to the OP.

Very often -- fares are quoted as "each way based on round trip". Are these in fact one-way fares you can <i>actually</i> book, or just half of the R-t fares?

These are one-way fares that can actually be booked and are not based on RT fares. The outbound AA and inbound UA flights are $145 each. AA seems to be charging a premium for their inbound flight which departs MCO around the same time as the UA flight but costs $201pp vs $145pp. It's all a mystery to me...hocus pocus!

Think of it this way: AA sold all their $145 tickets already but UA hasn't.

The only possible downside is that you would have to pay two change fees instead of one for a roundtrip ticket, if you had to change. But, the change fee, if offered, would pretty much wipe out the roundtrip ticket.

Buying the two one-ways has an upside in addition to saving $56. That would be some flexibility in the event you want to or have to change one of the dates. Instead of losing $290 (or $346) you would only lose the $145 for the leg that you don't take. Well, $145 plus whatever difference in fare that you would pay for the replacement one-way ticket.