Trying to plan a flight,..

"duurtlang" (duurtlang)
10/17/2014 at 08:30 • Filed to: None

...is it normal that a one way trip is over 3 times as expensive as a two way trip while using the exact same flight?

One way:
Lufthansa Amsterdam-Munich October 24: €437.28

Two way:
Lufthansa Amsterdam-Munich October 24: €63,28 (exactly the same flight, both economy)
Lufthansa Munich-Amsterdam October 28: €65,34
Total: €128,62

All prices including taxes and fees.

I'm now planning on booking a two way trip, and just !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! showing up for the return flight.

DISCUSSION (11)

KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs > duurtlang
10/17/2014 at 08:34

Yes, the airlines can and will do that.

Also, be wary, some airlines will charge you the difference in fare if you book a return ticket and don't show up. Not sure how Lufthansa is about that...

duurtlang > KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs
10/17/2014 at 08:41

I don't understand? I'm okay with paying the additional €65 for the return flight, even if I don't use it. Or do you mean they increase the price to €437 if I don't show up? I think this whole concept is rather weird.

MIATAAAA > duurtlang
10/17/2014 at 08:46

Yes. Rarely are one-way tickets cheaper.

.jdb. > duurtlang
10/17/2014 at 09:01

Piling on to agree with the others. One-way tickets are frequently more expensive. I do (well, did — not as much these days) a ton of travel for business and while it's not always the case, it's frequently the case.
This is one of the rare situations in which it might be helpful to contact a travel agent. Generally, it will (should) cost nothing to ask the agent to look stuff up for you; if she can get you a no-penalty one-way ticket for 63 Euros, even if she charges 30 Euros for it, you're still ahead.
True story (not the same thing, but equally absurd) I was trying to book travel from City X to Washington DC on short notice.
Direct flight - $800 roundtrip.
Flying from City Y to City X then on to DC: $500 roundtrip (note - I would be on the same damn flight as the $800 direct flight. It would literally mean driving 90 minutes for an additional flight to save $300).
Flying from City Y to City Z to DC: $420. Sure, it would mean that I'd spend more time (between flights and transfers) en route than it would to just drive to DC...but it would be a cheap ticket, so...yay?

jariten1781 > .jdb.
10/17/2014 at 09:24

I fly IAD to SFO round trip pretty much every other week. The worst I've seen is when a trip IAD-ORD-DFW-SFO was 1/3 the price of the direct flight. More miles for me I suppose.

Svend > duurtlang
10/17/2014 at 09:25

It's all too common. Even trains where I live are like that. It's cheaper for me to go from where I live to Birmingham, get off, have a coffee and something to eat then get the next train half an hour or so later to London than get a ticket from where I live to London, even though it's essentially the same train as it's the same company doing the exact same route from the same place to the same place.

That's why it's always best to shop around.

More so with flights as flight prices fluctuate depending on how fully booked that flight is. If it has lots of seats to fill they will drop the price (sometimes by quite a lot) a week or two before departure and then as it starts filling up they will increase the price again.

I've just had a look at Skyscanner and you've got a good deal really with a good range of travel times. 07:00, 15:40 and 20:05.

ttyymmnn > duurtlang
10/17/2014 at 09:38

There are some seriously absurd calculations that go into airfares, but my guess is that round trips are easier for the airline to handle. Airlines are all about capacity, and trying to fly the planes as full of people as possible. It would seem to me that if they sell you a one-way ticket to Munich, they will essentially have an empty seat on some return from to Amsterdam. If you book both ways, they can count on you both ways and figure their capacity. Which is also why they might penalize you if you buy a RT ticket and not use the return portion.

.jdb. > jariten1781
10/17/2014 at 09:49

Oof. I have a deep loathing for ORD. I once was going DFW-ORD on a widebody that was going on to London. From when I boarded to when they opened the door in ORD, I thought "THIS IS AWESOME, I'M DOING THIS FLIGHT AGAIN!" ... great in-seat entertainment, cavernous overhead storage, plenty of room ....
...and then they opened the door and the reality of hundreds of people getting out of a couple of doors hit me. I think I had an hour layover in ORD; a good 40 minutes of that was spent waiting to get off the damn plane.

KusabiSensei - Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs > duurtlang
10/17/2014 at 10:05

They will increase the price to €437 if you do not take the return flight, and bill you for the difference.

That's because you would have only took a one way trip, and they will bill you accordingly.

Otherwise they would be leaving a lot of revenue on the table.

jariten1781 > .jdb.
10/17/2014 at 11:05

ORD has one saving grace. They've got a Hilton inside the airport. Plus they save a ton of rooms for Gold and Diamond members when there's weather cancellations on the east coast making being stuck at the airport infinitely better.

.jdb. > jariten1781
10/17/2014 at 11:15

Yup. When I was doing weekly trips to Texas, I actually got stranded in ORD enough that the night manager recognized me.
My favorite debacle/recovery:
Showed up bright and early on a Thursday for my flight from [tiny Texas airport] ->DFW->CLT->[home], getting home by 11pm. Flight was cancelled, and since it was a small airport, the passengers in front of me had filled any open seats out of there for the day. Ticket agent said we could do the same flight tomorrow, but I really wanted to be home much sooner than 11pm Friday. Talked through a few scenarios, landed on:
Go back downstairs, rent a car, drive ~300 miles to DFW. Drop off car, get flight to ORD. Stay overnight in ORD, fly home in the morning, be there mid-morning Friday.
It all worked fine, and damn, Texas is huge.