Do open-ended airline tickets exist?
 

My son will be studying in China until May and then wants to stay through the summer to work and travel. His return date is uncertain. Does anyone know if open-ended tickets still exist? Or should he just get a one-way ticket and make arrangements when he has a date?

Any advice?

One way tickets typically cost more than roundtrip tickets. There are classes of tickets that allow a person to stay for up to a year. He could choose a return date, and pay to change the date of necessary.

This is an instance in which calling the airline and talking with them about options would be helpful.

You might also go to a site like Kayak.com and just fool around with one way vs Rt tickets.

about two weeks ago, I found one way tickets to Singapore were just about half the cost of the cheapest RT tickets.

My daughter is also doing study abroad, and I know from the last daughter that the kids always want to change their tickets at the end.

Of course, if prices really rise between now and then, the one way home may kill us, but I figure the flexibility is worth it. if it was just a domestic ticket, I'd swallow the change fee, but who knows where she'll want to fly out of, and there are so many options on so many airlines that simply changing isn't really a good option in our case.

There are special tickets through STA travel (I think they may be called "blue" tickets) where one may extend his/her ticket repeatedly for $25 each time. I used this type of ticket when traveling in Europe one summer and was able to extend my trip twice for only $25/time.
www.statravel.com
Liz

I've also bought and used the STA Travel tickets with $25 change fee. It's very convenient for this type of situation.

You should still be able to get a return ticket with an 'open' return, might not be so cheap, mostly valid 1 year ( sometimes subject to any change in fuel surcharges etc ) but you should be able to get.

You might also consider a round-the-world ticket. They are valid for 1 year, and they allow you to change the dates of any flight for free, as long as you do not change the routing of the ticket. (Routing changes cost $125.)

Star alliance is an especially good choice, as they have recently added Air China and Shanghai Airlines to their RTW program. More info is at http://tinyurl.com/364gup .

Thanks so much for all your information. I really appreciate the help.