Airlines use all kinds of methods to price discriminate, to get each passenger to pay as much as possible for their ticket. That largely comes in the form of trying to determine who is a business traveler and who is a leisure traveler.
Continue reading: New Trend: One-Way Domestic Flights More Expensive Than Roundtrip
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Even if this does stick around this will really only impact basic economy travelers, infrequent (whether with that airline or in general) travelers, and those with very little cash (but would assume this deferment books basic anyways).
Just book a return. Fly the first leg. Cancel the return. Use the credit for future flight.
Only caveat could be how much $ they consider each leg in the trip and how much credit you back. But I did a test search on your example and the round trip shows earning the same amount of loyalty points for each leg. So seems like should get 50% credit back
I noticed this for the first time just last week!! I was shocked at what I saw as this has not been the norm for quite a while. I was booking a roundtrip RDU-MSP flight on Delta for 8/8-8/11. I knew I wanted Delta for the direct flight, but was hoping to use AF miles - sadly there was only award availability one way. When I started pricing out one way cash tickets, I noticed that they were more expensive individually than if I had just bought a roundtrip cash ticket. So that's what I did in the end, not wanting to pay a cash premium for the one way ticket. I hope this goes away quickly!
Hi Ben. Are you going to do a story on JonNYC’s post about the AA/UA ORD traffic figures?
I hate this. I often book domestic RTs as two one ways so that I don't have to reprice the whole thing if I want to change a leg (which I do much more often for domestic than international).
Since I fly, since about 30 years it has always been like that in Europe. You pay more for a one way than for a return. And watch out, if you have like 3 returns paid and you don't use the whole trip you will be blocked by the Airline.
Ben, genuinely curious how this practice has been sustained across the Atlantic for years but you don't think it will hold for domestic - i'd have thought there was just as much if not MORE competition internationally (more carriers flying the same/similar direct routings and then significantly more still with one stop)?
Either way I wish they'd regulate against this for both domestic and international itineraries.
Also, an itinerary for two is priced less than if only one person is traveling. That is per person.
They can try. But if you have already flown the leg you wanted, then you can just DK.
I overheard someone talk about this recently. I don't really see how this squares up with the elimination of cancellation fees, and the practice of depositing credits. As this becomes widespread, people will just book multiple roundtrips, and start cancelling legs after flying.
Yes, TATL flights have always been like this. There are ways around it though.
I think the difference is competition. Roundtrip pricing broadly went away thank to LCCs which tended to price on a one way basis. LCCs are far less prevalent on long-haul, so airlines have been able to maintain the practice on long-haul more successfully.
Just to be clear though, the airline doesn't charge more for two one-way tickets. They just give you a discount if flying round trip 🙂
Transatlantic flights cost way more to operate compared to domestic flights within the US. As a result, any airline that tries to steal market share by offering lower prices typically won't be profitable. Norse (and Norwegian Long Haul before that) is a perfect example. They offer much cheaper one-way tickets compared to the competition in the markets they operate it. It is a little cheaper to book a round-trip ticket, but the difference is only a few dollars in my experience. However, without a significant market share, those airlines won't be profitable (and even if they achieve significant market share, their profitability is still highly seasonal). Just look at all of the failed low cost transatlantic carriers. Norse is still struggling.
That is why airlines maintain the high one-way pricing across the Atlantic. They know that most of the people looking for such itineraries are business travelers. If you book a multi-city or open-jaw ticket across the atlantic, many airlines price it as a round-trip so the fare increase isn't substantial. Many one-way travelers also value nonstop flights, so airlines have more pricing power in those cases (just look at BA or VS one-way tickets compared to TAP, which is much cheaper on one-way itineraries). The one-way ticket being more expensive is an established practice in those markets. In the US, it isn't. And there are many competitors on a lot of routes who would gladly undercut the legacy carriers on price. And the general population is much more willing to fly on a LLC or ULCC on a 2-3 hour flight compared to a transatlantic flight.
I would push back on this strongly. This looks to be like more of an anomaly than anything. Sky Key sees thousands and thousands of tickets / data points and generally speaking customers are far better booking multiple one ways instead of round trips because of the flexibility it gives you to take advantage of price drops. And most of the time the cost is the same for 2 one ways as it is for a round trip. The caveat to this would be certain international itineraries make far more sense to have a round trip.
Guessing they are doing their best to cut out OTC as they almost exclusively book two one ways. I don't know of any of them that price return flights
Ben, are you following the Gallego/Blumenthal/Warner letter to Delta about AI pricing? Wonder how this converges with Trump's new AI deregulation push (Sacks/Kratsios rolling back 'red tape') - seems like conflicting federal pressures.
Curious about your take...
I feel like this is more likely for <14 days because the return leg might be a close-in pricing.
Delta has priced two one ways as more than a round trip for as long as I can remember. Generally with a one way costing as much as 60-80% of the round trip ticket.
First of all, you won't get cash back if it's nonrefundable RT ticket, and you'd be stuck with lots of flight credits that will expire. Secondly, the airline may price/reprice the return leg in a way that seriously discourages you from doing that.
Because you can change the outbound without losing the cheap fare on the return.
Probably most of the world too. In fact, it's not unusual to find return tickets being sold for less than a single one-way ticket on the same route, never mind the total cost of two tickets.
Lufthansa engage in that sort of pricing and do allow open jaws basically anywhere within Europe- e.g. last year I bought a ticket for UK-Italy then Greece-UK and it was priced at the return level (buying two one-ways would've been ca. 50% extra).
Yeah I noticed this recently- though I don't think the trend goes back "decades" as you suggest. I think about 5-8 years ago, pre COVID, it was standard practice and then as airlines became more flexible (and maybe more anxious to compete against the LCCs) during COVID they adopted more fair pricing on one-ways. Anyway now it seems to be back to ridiculously inflated one-ways as a way to try to extract more revenue from business travelers. It's frustrating because often I need one-ways for positioning flights or return flights for miles bookings. Like for example, I will always try to book business class with miles on an outbound overnight trip to Europe but I might be okay booking economy or PE on the return for the daytime flight. This can be prohibitively expensive on some routes.
Because you don't want to get smacked (lose miles or have your account shut down or threat of being charged for a one-way) by the airline for skipping the return.
Maybe it’s my market, but this is often the case and has been for as long as I can remember for me. I rarely can get a one-way ticket for cheaper than a round trip. I fly out of a small local airport with two gates so that may be part of it.
I’ve had times when the one way was well over double the cost of a round trip ticket. It’s maddening.
Because
1. You found a cheap fare ow but not sure when you'll return but don't want to lose that cheap fare opportunity
2. Because you get to your destination and maybe drive to another state and want to return from that state instead of driving back to where you had landed
3. Because of a urgent issue like a dying relative and another airline has the fastest flight for you. (have seen this more than once)
4. Moving maybe. flying out to meet family to drive back together. And for me the ultimate reason. I once used a car buyer who found the car I wanted to buy and saved me several thousands in price and tax. I had to fly out to pick up the car. But we'll worth it.
It greatly depends on the distance of the open jaw. IE: TPA-JFK return EWR-TPA would be more comparable than TPA-SAN return SFO-TPA.
In the SFO example you def have 2 one ways vs a much smaller open jaw in the EWR/JFK/LGA market.
I absolutely hate this for flexibility. I never book round trips as a rule. If my outbound AA connection is busted, and I need to fly UA to get to my client meeting on time, you're going to cancel my entire ticket? The first times this happens I will scream to the high heavens. My positive assumptions are: airlines won't cancel the return if there are irrops on the outbound. Airlines will give credit if the return is canceled.
Awful. Another enshittification by American Airlines, who is also charging single travelers more and is known for being the one who introduced the baggage check-in fee causing the newly clogged, tiresome, stressful and long boarding and deplaning.
… but in Europe it’s going the other way round - it used to be this way but most airlines have dropped this and price one ways “normally” due to competition from Wizz/Ryanair/EasyJet.
If anything, this is a renewed trend, and not a new trend. Airlines did this decades ago.
Delta has been doing this for years, on award tickets as well as paid tickets. I made a comment in one of your posts about six weeks ago where I gave my data point that short-notice award booking RT to Atlanta, the roundtrip was cheaper than one one-way, let alone two. Furthermore, in my points/miles spreadsheet, there is a years-old annotation for Delta that roundtrip is much cheaper than one-way. I'm not so optimistic this will go away.
Besides being another way to price discriminate, it complicates the process of booking award tickets if you can't just use point.me, but have to go to individual airline websites to weigh r/t vs. one-way.
Actually surprised this took this long to reach domestic flights - these were quite common internationally
I think you missed the point here. One, one way is behing price more than a round trip. Thus, two, one ways would be more than double the price of a round trip.
Maybe it's been the routes and timings I fly, but with UA, I've never seen this to be the case of one ways being cheaper, often was the opposite with significant price increase if I booked it one way. It might be because I'm always trying to score upgrades and comparing that, but still, never saw a one way being cheaper. If it had been that way, I'd have been doing that.
Just buy a round trip ticket and fail to turn up for the return leg. What's the big deal?
This is not a new trend. It has often been the case. People are likely to book a round trip and not fly the return ticket. There is no risk of cancelation of the ticket in this case. This will affect the margins of the airline and capacity, etc.