Thanks to the domestic discount airlines and travel booking sites which have entered the rates competition, thrifty travelers can now find reasonably priced one-way tickets. Even though the big airlines still charge round-trip prices (or more) for one-way tickets on many international routes, they, too, have become more competitive for domestic one-way fares.
Booking a round-trip flight can be cheaper than booking one-way tickets on the same flights. Before booking two one-way flights, check the round-trip price to see if it's cheaper. Even if you're flying out of a different city than you're flying into, booking a so-called "open-jaw" flight could be much cheaper than booking two one-way flights.
As the names suggest, a round-trip journey includes both a flight from your starting point to your destination and a flight back to your origin, whereas a one-way only covers one of those segments. While the former is generally the simplest way to book a trip, some people prefer to buy two separate one-way tickets when they travel.
Perhaps you have rewards points with two different airlines that service your destination and want to cash them in during one trip. Booking separately allows you to do that. You might even find a good deal for the outbound part of your journey with one airline and for the return flight with a different carrier.
If you're traveling in a pair or group, you will save some major headaches by simply avoiding basic economy tickets and opting for main cabin economy. But sometimes these rock-bottom fares are just too enticing to pass up. If you are booked in basic economy and you want to avoid a fee to sit with your child, calling the airline is doubly important. Carriers sometimes bend the strident rules in this no-frills fare class to accommodate at least one parent to sit next to young children, though don't bank on it.
As an alliance, oneworld member airlines follow agreed procedures to provide through check-in service for passengers holding separate tickets involving another oneworld member airline. However, we have chosen not to highlight this service on our website.
Last summer I was on two separate tickets both operated by Iberia. the first one was a positioning flight from Porto (OPO) to Madrid booked with BA Avios. The 2nd one was continuing a longer itinerary from USA to Asia with a stopover in Madrid (JFK-MAD-stopover-MXP-HKG-NRT), booked with US Dividend miles. Iberia in Porto refused to check me through for the MAD-MXP part saying that not only these were separate tickets, but that they were booked with BA/US and it was impossible to check them through.
Back in 2016, there was a special Thanksgiving weekend Delta Air Lines 747 flight from Atlanta to Seattle that I really wanted to try. To get the rest of the way home to San Diego, I bought a separate ticket on Alaska Airlines. It was just cheaper that way.
Because these were two separate nonrefundable one-way tickets, I had to scramble to get on the phone with Alaska Airlines and cancel that ticket to prevent losing the full value of it. But I still had to purchase another last-minute one-way ticket to San Diego instead. Ouch.
Despite some very expensive (and stressful) experiences with purchasing one-way tickets instead of round-trip over the years, I still prefer the flexibility of building my own itinerary with separate tickets. this is because:
For this example, the better option for booking varies. In this case, a solo traveler saves more money by booking separate one-way tickets. For bulk ticket purchases, like for a traveling family, the cheapest way to book is with a multi-city ticket.
Because airlines have to pay a federal excise task on base fares, Spirit tries to avoid having to pay this tax by adding on an $18.99 passenger usage fee to tickets booked over the phone or online. This fee is not a tax and is included in the vast majority of online and phone booking scenarios.
Translation: Much like Delta, Unites also discourages parents and families from booking basic economy fares, saying there's no guarantee they'll be seated together. However, United stresses that the airline will try to seat children with parents starting 72 hours before departure. But that's a narrow time window, at which point many of the seats next to each other may have been taken.
We recently booked a basic economy ticket for 2 adults/1 child (11-year-old) one-way that included 2 separate flights on United about 6 weeks out.
My wife called the MileagePlus customer service number and was easily successful in asking to be assigned seating together with her minor child. YMMV of course. I also would have called HUCA if the first call had not been successful.
But some sources might advise you to look at buying separate tickets between your home airport and your connection city, then from your connection city on to your final destination. This is more common for international flights, but from time to time you might save a few bucks doing this with a domestic itinerary.
Splitting tickets also can leave you with rushing to make nightmare hikes across large airports, which typically cluster gate assignments to airlines and their partners. Airports literally are designed around the assumption that people won't split tickets.
I have rarely observed much in the way of savings by splitting legs, granted we live in a region served by three major airports and rarely fly to regions not served by a major airport. I guess we take that luxury for granted, because booking flights through a single carrier (often Southwest for domestic flights) is always the cheapest and most convenient solution. For our upcoming trip to Texas, flying from BWI to DAL on non-stop Southwest flights was cheaper than any other alternative (including Spirit, JetBlue and other low cost carriers), and of course on SW, you get free checked bags, a $30 savings (or more) compared to most other airlines.
Cheaper airlines have fees to book seats together, even if your children are very young - we shared a story about a mum who was separated from her 2-year-old on a flight home from Majorca because she didn't pay for seats together.
@lucky This is a really useful item and I'm sure it will help a lot of people. Another application of this that might also help a lot of people is add-on journeys. Say you want to cross the Atlantic from Europe in business but you need an internal flight. Maybe, for example, you find a really competitive fare to New York or Chicago in business where there is a lot of competition but you need to tag on a two-hour internal flight. Suddenly the fare rockets up because the standard ticket search only shows onward journeys in First and you get penalised for that with a very high price when you'd be happy to do a couple of hours in economy. Well, you could just buy separate tickets in economy but you risk a missed connection, which could be especially expensive or inconvenient on the return trip. The better option is to carry out exactly the same time of search you used in your article except when you have found the fare you use a multi-leg search to pair up the components. It won't always work, as sometimes there won't be a fare with an economy add-on or the price for economy might still be excessive, but most times you will be able to continue on in economy without paying a high price for premium seats. Also, there's a much-increased chance of a free upgrade to a comfort or economy plus seat if you have just come off a long haul flight and ask nicely when you are travelling with the same airline, especially if you have status with the alliance.
Airline booking ploys are used by travelers in commercial aviation to lower the price of flying by circumventing airlines' rules about how tickets may be used. They are generally a breach of the contract of carriage between the passenger and the airline, which airlines may try to enforce in various ways.
Throwaway ticketing is purchasing a ticket with the intent to use only a portion of the included travel. This situation may arise when a passenger wants to travel only one way, but where the discounted round-trip excursion fare is cheaper than a one-way ticket. This can happen on mainline carriers where all one-way tickets are full price. For instance, a passenger intending to fly only from Los Angeles to New York may find the one-way ticket costs $800, but that the round-trip fare is $500. The passenger, therefore, purchases the round trip from Los Angeles to New York and back to Los Angeles and boards the flight to New York but stays in New York and "throws away" the second half of the ticket by not showing up for the return flight. It is possible to "throw away" only the final segments of a ticket because throwing away a segment by not showing up for the outbound trip often leads to the airline's canceling the entire reservation.[1]
Hidden-city ticketing or skiplagging is a variant of throwaway ticketing. The passenger books a ticket to a destination that they have no plans on traveling to, with a connection at the intended destination (the "hidden" city), walks away at the connection node, and discards the remaining segment. Flight fares are subject to market forces and so do not necessarily correlate to the distance flown.[2][3] As a result, a flight between point A and point C, with a connection node at point B, might be cheaper than a flight between point A and point B. It is then possible to purchase an airline ticket from point A to point C, disembark at the connection node (B), and discard the remaining segment (B to C).
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