Kinda urgent noob air ticket Q

[Dale Dough]

I'm trying to find out what it will cost me to fly around in a circle from Moscow - Las Vegas - LA - Amsterdam - Moscow. What I did was try the various engines around on the web, and I either chose 'multiple destinations' or listed each trip separately.

What I came up with is that United offers a LV-LA-Amsterdam trip for 1899 dollars. At the same time, United will fly me to LA and back for 600 Euros if I start in Amsterdam (both non-direct, that's not where the diff comes from). WTF?

Could it actually be the best solution to just book two-way tickets for a particular leg of my journey even if I won't use the return ticket, or is there some other way to get around it and get a comparable price?

[StevieG]

That 600 Euro United flight might not be electronic and they may not issue it to a US address (or wherever it is you are) in order to protect against just the thing you are trying to do.

[Dale Dough]

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in order to protect against just the thing you are trying to do

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Which is? I just did another search.. Northwest/KLM does a round trip LAX-AMS leaving jan 14 back feb 1 *non-stop* for 676 dollars. This flight can be purchased on-line. The exact same flight one-way costs $2924. These flights differ in that with the first option I can go back to LA if I want for nothing. W.T.F.?

[StevieG]

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in order to protect against just the thing you are trying to do

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Which is?

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They are attempting to price the ticket by market segment, in this case, country of origin. You are trying to buy as if you belong to a different market segment.

[El Diablo]

Dale,

A lot of times round-trip flights are cheaper than one ways. This is because people who need one way flights are generally business travelers going from A-B-C-D and are willing to pay a lot of money for the flight. On the other hand, those flying standard round-trip tickets are more often on personal travel and much more price sensitive. Similar thing w/ price differences when a ticket includes a Saturday night stay vs not.

It is against the rules to buy tickets where you are buying multiple tickets you won't use part of to circumvent these rules. A classic example is flying somewhere Mon-Fri. It will often be cheaper to buy two round trip tickets, one A-B-A and the other B-A-B, with Saturday night stayovers and use the first leg of each of those tickets to get A-B-A.

That, however, is against the rules, and airlines are pretty good at identifying it now. If you do this, your tickets are subject to be voided and/or charged to you at the highest price possible.

If you do the two tickets on different airlines, you are far less likely to get caught, but there's still a risk.

[Dale Dough]

I figured the following:

A one way costs 100 and an otherwise equivalent two way costs 60 total. Buying the one way is for suckers.
Still, common sense dictates that there has to be a one way available for >30 but <60. Say, 40. It just requires more effort to find it. It's probably something as similarly simple but counterintuitive as buying a two way. Just buying the two way is for suckers. It's an old trick that only even bigger suckers don't already know about. Hopefully OOT will relieve me of this 2nd degree suckerdom.

That, however, is against the rules, and airlines are pretty good at identifying it now. If you do this, your tickets are subject to be voided and/or charged to you at the highest price possible.

No wai. I had no idea they were this extreme in pursuing their market separation policies. However, it's their T&C, I guess they can put whatever they want in it. Funny thing though, licensed travel agencies have pulled the return ticket for a one-way journey on my behalf two times - once without even telling me about it or asking when I wanted the return to be, just in case.

[Gandor]

El D, can you post a link or a source for this? I don't see how they can offer you a price, you accept the price, then void the transaction after money has changed hands. I can't ever remember clicking that I agree not to do this whenever I buy a ticket.

Thanks.

[El Diablo]

Dale: "Funny thing though, licensed travel agencies have pulled the return ticket for a one-way journey on my behalf two times" This used to be pretty standard practice by a lot of cool travel agents, and in fact my corporate travel agent did this for countless trips of mine. Most travel agencies stopped doing this once the airlines started catching on and charging them penalties for the full fare one-way prices.

Gandor: No, I can't. Very easy to research if you care. It's a fact, though. You agree to it in the conditions of carriage which define how you are going to use the ticket and allow the airline to do things like void the ticket and/or charge you the additional difference in price if you do things like throw away the return leg.

[Dale Dough]

So as well as buying a service, you are signing a contract placing you under obligation to show up for the return flight or else...

I was gonna say LMAO, but upon reflection, this whole concept doesn't seem as outlandish to me as I initially thought.

If I find a travel agency that will sell me such tickets and I can prove that I only wanted one way - say, with an email to them, can I shift the blame and avoid trouble? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[El Diablo]

DD,

If you just don't show up, they'll never do anything. They will only come after you if they have some evidence that you were trying to circumvent their fare rules. They are not coming after people because their plans change in the middle of a trip. That's why, USUALLY, you are going to be OK if your tickets are on different airlines. However, w/ all these newfangled computers and whatnot, it's hard to say for sure what will get caught and what won't.

No idea re: whether travel agencies would eat this stuff or try to pass it on to you. I haven't used a traditional travel agency in a number of years.