I had to reschedule my ticket once already this year, and came within a whisker of having to do it again. So, for my next trip, I thought I would look at open-end return or one-way tickets. Open-end returns, I found, have gone the way of the dodo ever since fare deregulation. But what I found out about one-way ticket prices blew my mind!
In a nutshell, booking a one-way ticket will cost you anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand more than the round-trip economy-class tickets on the exact same flights! I really could not find a reasonable and rational explanation for this anomaly. I would find it reasonable if one-way tickets were more expensive if you bought them each way than a single round-trip, but to charge you substantially more for a one-way ticket than the roundtrip? Pricing different airlines and flights, I found that a $1400 round-trip would change to a $2300 one way on the same flight that the roundtrip was based on, or $4600 if you bought one-way tickets in each direction. Similarly, a $2300 round trip would be a $3400 one-way! A $400 round trip becomes a $610 one-way. The logic completely escapes me. And I know I'm not the only one thinking about this!
Some people postulate that this is a way to capture high-spending business travellers, who may not be able to pin down a precise travel schedule for one reason or another, or perhaps may be switching travel mode. I cleverly thought, "Then maybe they could buy the round-trip and not use the return leg!", but it turns out that the airlines already thought of this, and have instituted penalty clauses for failure to use a return leg or other activities such as "hidden city" bookings. They even threaten to blacklist you from ever flying with them again. Why, I wonder, would they be upset if you don't use something you've already paid them for? And think of the fuel savings from not having to carry that passenger and his/her baggage! Can you say "unexpected profits"? "Hidden city", I discovered, refers to the use of "legged" schedules, or flights with stopovers or layovers, where one of the intermediate airports is the actual destination of the traveler, using such indirect flights often being substantially cheaper than a direct flight. For example, I once flew from Miami to Newark via Houston, and people sitting next to me had paid more than my roundtrip fare just to travel one-way from Miami to Houston. From that perspective, my Houston-Newark flight was free for me. As the kids like to text, wtf?
Airlines also have other pricing anomalies which make their arguments of the price of fuel and the weight of baggage appear to be just that much banana oil. For example, it is cheaper to fly from Miami to Anchorage, Alaska, than it is to fly from Miami to Chicago. You can go from La Guardia to Atlanta to Dallas to Jacksonville to Cincinnati to La Guardia(as I did once), cheaper than just going from Newark to Washington DC. And while you sit on that country-hopping flight, the people boarding and de-boarding on any one leg are paying more than you paid for the entire tour! I am baffled! And then they want to hit you with fees for baggage, for food, for pillows and, soon, for being overweight or for not having used the toilet at the airport. If you can fly 50 people 5000 miles for $340 apiece and make a profit, surely you can fly 100 people 2500 miles for $300 and make a profit without the song-and-dance about baggage surcharges? Or making passengers stand for the duration of the flight?
I've considered other angles, such as discouraging terrorists who don't want/don't need a return ticket, and it doesn't fit that theory either. I don't think they particularly care about being penalized for the unused return leg. It's kind of funny, then, that the TSA scrutinizes one-way tickets with extra care, apparently being blissfully unaware that terrorists are notoriously stingy with their group cash(remember the flophouse in Paterson, NJ that some of the 9/11 terrorists used?), and will not pay for a one-way ticket that is considerably more expensive than a round-trip. I've had one person try to explain that the passenger paying $186 for an indirect flight is subsidizing the passenger paying $375 to fly to the stopover which is half the distance. Huh?? I may not be the sharpest tool in the drawer, but I thought that you would have to pay more than the other guy in order to subsidize his cost. I mean, it's not like the airline is pushing the passenger out the door as they fly over the intermediate airport. They have to land the plane, pay landing and gate fees and possibly take on a fresh crew, food and fuel. So for all intents and purposes, the next leg of the flight must stand on its own economic merits.
Can anyone possibly find the time to explain this to my satisfaction?
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