One Way Flight

I'm moving to England in October and I've been looking at flights for my move. I got a good chuckle when I looked at one way flights from LAX to LHR and they were almost $1800 My fiance told me to check the price of a round trip flight and they were $865! Needless to say we are going to go with the roundtrip flight and I will obviously not use the return leg, but what gives with those prices? Why so much higher for the one way vs. the round trip?? I'm completely clueless.

 

I've never understood the reason, but I've noticed the same thing. Keep in mind before you buy (if you haven't already), that some airlines will actually give you a credit if you cancel the return trip after booking it, so you actually can get by paying half of the round-trip fare.

About 10 years ago, I flew one way on a Southwest roundtrip flight for $99. I canceled the return flight after making the first flight, and they actually gave me $44.50 back as a credit toward my next flight. A real one-way ticket was something like $129. (I'm not sure Southwest still allows this, but it did back then.)

 

When we go to Las Vegas I almost always book one way flights there and one way flights back because its cheaper for us that way.

For the prices you were finding: maybe you had search settings set a particular way for the one way search that you didn't do on the round trip flights? Just to check myself I did some searches on Expedia for random dates at the end of October and while I did see some one way flights were $1600+ (usually it was certain airlines that had the high rates) there were flights that same day for as low as $500-ish one way.

 

If you're only looking at american legacy carriers, that's your problem. Check carriers like IcelandAir and Aer Lingus - they're known to have decent one way prices to Europe.

(this issue comes up a lot on Cruise Critic, for people doing transatlantic cruises. Or open jaws as many european cruises are not roundtrips....)

 

I believe Southwest treats all depart/return legs independantly now so there is no different between a round-trip or one-way price when looking at a particular leg. I love that because it makes it easier to adjust one leg of a trip without effecting the other. If the price on my return or depart leg goes down but the other goes up I can get a credit for the price difference on the reduced leg while still maintaining my original fair for the now more expensive leg. Or as happened on our upcomming trip, we booked very early on a whim when they had a major sale but ended up not liking how that worked out for hotels. So we adjusted our departure date (had to pay a little more because the prices weren't as good) without rebuying/rebooking our return flight.

Aside from the lack of first class I think southwest should be the model for all airlines.

 

Yes it's a strange one! With most direct transatlantic flights you will find a better price for the return journey. Do not expect a refund for the return leg. Not sure if it is any different for flights with an internal connection.

There is no point comparing internal US single and return flight costs with transatlantic flights. Chalk and cheese!

Edited to add that Air New Zealand offer single legs LAX-LHR at a decent price and they are a very good airline.

 

This has been the case for many, many moons...especially on AA. While researching tickets for my trip in Oct, I was going to use miles for one leg and pay for the other leg -- as I was checking roundtrip the legs were around $177 a piece. Obviously to do this I would have to book one leg as a one way ticket. I checked and the one way to/from Vegas was almost $400. MORE than the cost of the roundtrip, which was $342.

The airlines continue to ask us to bend over time and time again!

 

drea - for your exact dates try looking on http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Air new zealand are doing some deals under 500 - even with finishing in manchester for under 600. care with the time between flights though - I'm sure that Immigration will need to know loads of info - like you haven't already had to deal with them enough....

 

It' generally to do with one way tickets usually being fully-flexible, and they know they can get away with charging business travellers more (who would use these tickets most of the time).

That and it's much easier to forecast revenue with return tickets.