One way tickets from US to Europe and Europe to US
 

I just read another thread - with slightly different circumstances- that got me thinking. I am flying from Boston to Bergen, Norway on a one way ticket (Iceland Air). Five days later I am flying from Bergen to Krakow, Poland on a one way ticket (Norwegian Air). Then five days later from there to London (Easyjet) and three days later from there to Rome on another one way ticket (BA). Then after three weeks I am flying back to Boston from Rome on a one way ticket (AerLingus).

All these flights have etickets which I have printed out and could show anyone. I never thought about the problems with one way tickets to Europe because I frequently fly from place to place within Europe on one way tickets, as do many people, and it's never an issue. But this is the first time I've flown to/from the US on a one way ticket. The reason for all these one way tickets is that I couldn't find flights from Boston to Bergen and back from Rome to Boston on the same airline for anywhere close to the price I'm paying for these one ways.

Just checking to see if anyone thinks this could be a problem.

Since you have a return ticket home, and outward bound tickets, I wouldn't think this would be a problem. The only countries I've ever been questioned about my finances or my length of stay were Scotland and England.

It's not so much return ticket you need as onward ticket to another destination, and eventual return home.

Norway, Poland, London, Rome! Sounds like quite a trip, have fun.

I'm surprised that one-way tickets to Europe and back are less expensive than round-trip tickets. In my experience, a one-way ticket has been much more expensive than a round-trip one.

Depends on the airlines.

I wonder how the people at Customs/Immigration KNOW exactly what someone's itinerary is and what airplane tickets they might actually possess...unless they ASK.

Do they have some link to the airline sites they use to find out these things?

They ask, especially if you are young, female, a person of color, or strike them as in any way out of the ordinary. Out of the ordinary can be someone who travels a lot (especially a female) or who bounces around from place to place, as for instance from Boston to Bergen to Kracow to London to Rome to Dublin to Boston.

The key issue here isn't "Europe", but the UK (your Rome-Boston flight requires a plane change in Ireland, but you won't need to go through Irish immigration)

Historically, the worst nation for illegal overstaying (and, in practice, "benefit tourism") in the UK is Australia, so practically all youngish travellers from the main English-speaking countries outside Europe are prime targets for interrogation by UK immigration. Colour absolutely isn't a flag for interrogating foreigners: indeed UK immigration goes out of its way to target reasonably affluent white youth to demonstrate it's not racially profiling (how to handle South Asian-origin Britons returning from the nastier bits of the Middle East is a whole nuther story). In my youth, the prettiest Canadian and American female undergraduates had a far tougher time at Heathrow than black Rhodesian Marxist guerillas.

Since rejected travellers trigger a fine on the airline carrying them, check in staff at Continental airports are usually required to see onward travel documents for non-European travellers to the UK with one-way tickets. It's also not been unusual to find UK immigration officials at Continental airports with a recent history of generating relatively high dodgy immigrant levels. I (neither pretty nor young and self-evidently British) have been questioned by British immigration at Prague and Rome - I assume so that a form can be completed demonstrating no potentially racist, ageist or sexist bias.

Alec may tell us this has been stopped. But it's a complex reaction to a messy set of real problems.

Thanks for the thoughts. I really don't think I'll have a problem given that I have onward tickets from Bergen. The rest are intra-European flights which I have done on one way tickets almost every year so I'm sure are not a problem. If I hadn't seen that other post I wouldn't have even given it a thought.

Interesting that some think the itinerary is 'bouncing around'. If I said I were going from Naples to Florence to Milan to Venice over a months time would you consider that 'bouncing around'. The length of the flights are all around two to two and a half hours and cost less than €110 each - so not much different than train travel between four cities. So because the destinations are in different countries that makes it 'bouncing around'?

I think the reason the one way tickets were cheaper than a round trip was that both Iceland Air and Aer Lingus have relatively inexpensive flights, but neither of them go to both the places I wanted to start/end. I could have done it on other carriers that service both those cities but they were more expensive. Sometimes you need to be creative.

>>So because the destinations are in different countries that makes it 'bouncing around'?<<

I've questioned this mentality as well. It can actually be much harder and more time consuming to get to Positano or reach some popular parts of Tuscany or the lakes as part of an all-Italian trip than to fly from Italy to another country, especially if you use small but extremely well connected airports like Bologna or Pisa. I have had lunch in Pisa and arrived later that day in Amsterdam in plenty of time for dinner, and after several days easily gone to London or Paris. Had I been headed to Torino by train instead, and then on to Lago di Como, and then Venice, it would have been a lot more complicated and more time consuming in terms of travel, but nobody would have thought I was bouncing around so long as I didn't go to Switzerland.

Yes I agree with you. I think that many times flying these days within Europe can be cheaper and, dare I say, even easier! I remember being jealous of our friend's kids when the first really competitive budget fights started up who, now at twenty years of age have so many good options to go to parts of Europe that were much more difficult to get too when I was twenty years of age because we were pretty much limited to trains.

I applaud your creativity. Another tip for those who may not already know, but Aer Lingus is a super good place to use BA miles-it was only 12,500 miles for us to fly Boston Bordeaux via Dublin back in May and since all the airports are pretty small and easy to fly in and out of, it was one of the best flying experiences I have had in awhile getting to Europe.

I didn't say that you were bouncing around. I said that in the minds of customs and immigration and -- in the US -- the TSA, you are behaving in a way different to the vast majority of travelers. This makes you the object of special attention.

On a business trip in the US when I was in my 50's and still highly respectable, my bags were searched THREE times at Dulles between the taxi drop off and the aircraft because I had a "suspicious" itinerary.

My wife traveled frequently to the UK on business in the 1980's, when few women traveled on business. She always got "special attention"; once you are in the computer, you are there forever.

We have been questioned because we DON'T bring back souvenirs. Most people do, so we must be hiding Rolexes.

You asked, "Could this be a problem?" My answer was essentially "could be". But not necessarily. Just depends on who is on duty that day and how they feel about you.