round trip flight tickets vs. one way
 

Flying from Ohio to Stavanger for woodturners cruise up the west coast of Norway. Then plan to see a bit of Netherlands and Belgium and hopefully take a river cruise from Amsterdam to Basel, Swit., flying home from there. One way tickets look outrageous cost to Stavanger and home from Basel. Round trip to and from each city are actually much cheaper in the long run. Can I buy the round trip tickets and not use one-half of each of them, to save money??? Or is there another way to not spend such huge amounts as one way tickets???

Book Multi City. There is an option for that on airline booking page.

so I don't know if you are trying to do a particular airline. People can be odd about that, and I tend to go with cheap.

And I don't know if you hate layovers or what your dates are.

But. Given what I did. Let's say you fly from

Cleveland to Boston (JetBlue 70-100)
Boston to stavanger (Norwegian $270)

That's 370. Which seems reasonable.

And then Basel- gatwick (easy jet) ($50)

Gatwick to Boston (Norwegian, 200)

Boston to cleveland (70-100, jet blue)

So 350

Which is 720. Roundtrip for the same price as one way fares between Ohio and your actual destinations when I looked.

The obvious cost, though, is time. If your whole trip isn't on one ticket, I would want several hours if not a whole day between your domestic and international flights. I liked Norwegian but something you've got to be careful of is that they only fly on set days out of various airports. So you'll have to play with your dates and flight times to make this work.


(The way I made this work is that I just used it as an opportunity to spend time in NYC. Norwegian wasn't flying out of my home airport at the time. My ability to be really flexible on my dates saved me a lot of money, but since you have a cruise to meet up with, you may spend as much money in hotels as you would in the flight tickets you're trying to not spend money on.)


Anyway- the basic idea behind the above is that it is sometimes much cheaper to fly into your cheapest European hub and then get a flight with a discount airline like easy jet. Internal discount airlines in Europe are super cheap- almost like a bus fare!

One-way tickets are always very expensive. You don't want to buy two one-way tickets, you want open-jaw (multi-city tickets).

One-way tickets CAN be "economical" but it depends on the airline you use. We are probably going to use AirBerlin for a one-way or Norwegian when we fly over in the Fall for a trans-Atlantic crossing. BOTH of those carriers offer one-way segments which are a lot cheaper than any we can get on so-called "legacy" carriers like American, Delta, or United.

You might try looking at a site such as www.skyscanner.com before making a decision.

True, one-way tickets on Norwegian or Icelandair or others can be very economical. But a lot of people don't realize that open-jaw tickets, even with legacy carriers, can save them a lot of costs on the ground.

Is this your August 18 trip? It may be difficult to price flights so far out. Depending which part of Ohio you live in you could consider flying from Toronto. With the declining Canadian dollar flights to and from Europe will soon be free for Americans.

"True, one-way tickets on Norwegian or Icelandair or others can be very economical."

We are holding one-way MIA-AMS tickets on WOW for 3 June that cost $150...

I am fully expecting to be WOWed...

But Norwegian is perfectly fine. New 787s. If you buy the cheap seats just BYO food and they ignore you. What could be better?

I think there are now only a few airlines who price per trip to/from Europe and the US, rather than making it very expensive to buy only one leg. I wish they all would stop doing that, it's just a longterm custom. Even in the US for domestic flights, I think most of the majors still do that although Southwest starting per trip pricing has thankfully shoook them up a little (and Jet Blue).

Within Europe, you can get cheap one-way tickets, evne on some of the major airlines like Air France, due to competition from the airlines like Easyjet and Ryanair.

I always find it very surprising how many people have never heard of and don't even try to price out an open-jaw ticket (which is usually labeled multi-city on airlines' websites). I've been booking tickets like that for decades, ever since I started traveling much. In fact, in the old days, you could easily cobble together a roundtrip fare with two completely different airlines going and returning (like United and AA). You can't really do that any more, I don't think, unless they are partners.

Condor air is cheap one-way also, I believe, cheap German airline (owned by Lufthansa) which flies to Frankfurt and other places in Europe. They have limited days they fly and from limited airports, of course. They do fly out of BWI (Baltimore), and you can get a one-way from BWI to Frankfurt for only 250 euro right now, for August, for example. They don't have flights in the winter, either, from the US.

They do fly out of both Pittsburgh and Toronto, however, which could work for Ohio depending where in Ohio. It would help if one knew where in Ohio as they have at least 3 major airports. they don't fly to Norway, but do fly to Geneva. In fact, I think you'd get much better flights home from Geneva no matter what, rather than Basel. On Condor, you can get a one-way flight from GVA to PIT on Monday, Aug 21st, for only 380 euro, for example (it does require a change in Frankfurt, maybe all their planes to/from the US go through Frankfurt, not sure). That would be convenient if you were on the eastern side of Ohio.

I don't know cheap airlines from US to Oslo. And I suspect you are never going to find a cheap flight to Stavanger.

Oh My! Thank you all so very much for your information! I can tell you really know your way around travelling. I had never heard of open jaw. And the prices you quoted are SO MUCH less than what I had seen. Thank you again - I see I will have to investigate a round of choices.

Our best deal to Norway was with Icelandair. All flights have a stop-over in Reyjkavik. We made it a two night stop to get over the long flight. From there we flew to Bergen. Our return was from Copenhagen. I'm not sure where else in Europe they fly.

If you would tell us where you are starting from, we might be able to help more. My best guess is that you could very easily find yourself a cheap flight over on Norwegian as they do fly to Stavanger . Coming from Basel will be a treat, though...

Will probably fly from Cleveland, Ohio into Europe and back to Cleveland at the end of our trip. Thanks for your expertise!

What marvelous mouse set up for you looks pretty good, then. Keep in mind that if you buy them by the segment, as you will likely have to do, the airline has no responsibility for getting you alternate routing due to weather or mechanical delays.

Zurch is just and hour from Basel and will probably offer fewer connections flying home.

Zurich
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