Most domestic airline passengers should book two one-way tickets, instead of buying a roundtrip. Yet people buy roundtrips. Here’s why you may be buying your airline tickets all wrong – you’ll save money and have greater flexibility.
It used to be that you’d book roundtrip tickets because one-ways were more expensive. That’s rarely true anymore for domestic trips, and hasn’t been in many years. I was buying mostly one-ways for domestic travel a decade ago.
There was a downside back then – if you wound up changing or cancelling both directions of travel, you’d pay two change fees rather than just one. But now that change fees are mostly gone from U.S. flights, there’s little reason to book roundtrips and many downsides to doing so.
- If you book a roundtrip, and you want to make a change to your first flight, both directions get repriced. If you book one-way you can reprice only the direction you want to change. (Of course, without change fees, you can reprice either direction or both if the price goes down and receive a credit for the difference with many airlines.)
- Basic economy tickets may be fully lost (so you buy a whole new ticket for both directions) if you need to make a change to the outbound, although the specific policy here varies by airline. For airlines where changes are possible to basic economy tickets, you may also not be able to change the return once outbound travel begins.
- You may be paying more for your tickets with a roundtrip. If basic economy is available only one way, and you would buy it because it’s cheaper, it won’t be offered if you are booking roundtrip. It has to be available both directions in order to get the better pricing. (Or, if your airline will mix fares this way, the more restrictive fare rules apply to the full roundtrip even if you’re only buying basic economy in one direction.)
- Paid upgrades to first class may not carry over if you make a change. So if you book a roundtrip, and paid for an upgrade on the flight direction you aren’t changing, you could lose that as a result of changing the other direction.
- One way tickets can make it easier to combine different airlines on a trip. Airlines generally don’t sell non-partner carriers (though there are exceptions) so if you wanted to fly American one way and United the other you may need to book them separately, or book through an agent, whether brick-and-mortar or online. And you want to avoid booking through online agencies like Expedia whenever possible, because any changes or problems you deal with through them involves cringe-level service
International one ways can still be much more expensive than a roundtrip. So this frequently just applies to domestic travel. There are still some domestic trips (and domestic mileage redemptions) where roundtrips are cheaper, so always check price.
And basic economy is trickier. I mentioned some downsides to booking basic economy as roundtrip, but you can pay with an airline like American to receive a credit on a basic economy ticket that you cancel. It’s $99. And if you cancel two one-ways, that’s $99 twice. The advice is only clear when you’re booking tickets that don’t have change fees.
One other scenario where one-ways don’t work out as well is if your flight cancels or delays and you throw in the towel on a trip, you can only get that ticket refunded – if you’re on two one ways that means getting money back for your outbound but not for your return. As long as you have no change fee tickets that may be ok – you’ll use the credit later. But vouchers aren’t as good as money, and if it’s with an airline you rarely fly the voucher may be tough to use.
I often don’t book both directions of travel at the same time, I might lock in my outbound because I know exactly when I need to be somewhere or because I can confirm upgrade availability. And I might wait on the return, perhaps because of price or lack of upgrade space or because I just haven’t figured out plans yet. Booking one ways suits my planning style and no longer has the downsides that it used to.
The key word here: *can* — The reality is that it depends. Often, one-way is best for award tickets. If paying cash and going roundtrip, then it’s usually best as a single itinerary, instead of separately. However, these days, you need to shop around, compare booking direct verses OTAs like Amex Travel that may have a discount for the international business class with the Platinum card, etc. I’ve been using the free points.me tool via Amex, and the Points Path extension for Google Flights, to try to aggregate the available miles options, instead of having to go to each airlines’ proprietary website to search and compare. None of it is perfect–that’s likely by design. But it works for now.
My upcoming JetBlue points round trip between LAX and BUF was fortunately booked as a round trip. When JetBlue changed the return to more than seven hour earlier, I was able to cancel the whole ticket for free and change the outbound flight to a redeye the night before on a new ticket. If it had been booked as two separate tickets, as the JetBlue website had suggested, the only good option would have been to change the return to a day later and that would have came with an extra day of car rental and an extra day of vehicle parking. Further, by changing the whole thing, I was able to get the new ticket for almost 6,000 points less.
Always check both options before booking. In my experience with. AA, it is very inconsistent.
This is the most circuitous, confusing “advice” I have ever had the displeasure of reading. Maybe it’s too early in the morning but none of this was clear or direct and I came away with nothing more than I came into reading it.
WHS is correct.
This is a very confusing “article” to read.
I found the article clear.
The two prior commenters must have low IQ.
This is funny…we have two haters (don’t know why they still waste their precious time reading this author) and one that is likely the author’s alter ego.
SSONation,
Also correct. Except for the “hater” bit.
However, I do prefer blog articles composed using syntax, correct spelling and a few other big words.
You are also correct about wasting precious time. I have learned my lesson.
It’s back to OMAAT and Lucky for me.
Cheers.
Annoying airlines price roundtrip cheaper than one way. But awards tickets are always priced as one ways.
Are you sure this is true? I often buy domestic roundtrips and reprice later on AA, but I always thought the price change is only based on the segment being changed.
“If you book a roundtrip, and you want to make a change to your first flight, both directions get repriced. If you book one-way you can reprice only the direction you want to change. (Of course, without change fees, you can reprice either direction or both if the price goes down and receive a credit for the difference with many airlines.)”
Agree especially on Expedia and similar bookings. When you need to change anything or have a dilemma, cringe and worse. Never again. Direct with airlines means someone has the power to fix. Learned that the hard way.
Gary primarily discussed domestic flights, but I never book round-trip tickets domestically—I prefer the flexibility. Since I travel to Europe at least five times a year, I usually book round-trip tickets originating from Switzerland. My first flight there about two years ago was on points, and I’ve found that booking round trip from europe often (though not always) results in lower costs and greater flexibility. Because my return date is usually uncertain, I simply cancel the return leg and rebook when I’m ready. While this does come with an extra cost, the overall savings can exceed $1,000 compared to booking from the U.S.
For example, the last time I did this was in February while the cost is generally very little, this time I needed to return through LHR instead of ZRH, and the change fee for both the date and destination was around $200. In the end, I still flew back from ZRH—mainly because I wanted to pick up Sprüngli’s seasonal special. January–February featured dark chocolate truffle coated in raspberry. March–April is dark chocolate brownie with walnut. However, the real highlight this month is the truffle of the day Rhubarb-Vanilla. Sprungli is the preferred store since Laderach is now available everywhere.
Out of curiosity, I checked the same itinerary for travel next week—the difference in price was $2,000 more to originate from the U.S..
This is the same for hotel rates. Let’s say I book a 3 night stay, each night is $200. If one of the nights drops in price to say, $150, I can’t just have them reprice the 3 night stay. I’d have to cancel the 3 night reservation, and rebook. But tho’ 1 nt dropped to $150, the other nights may have risen to $250 or be unavailable. If you book 3 1-night stays, you could cancel the 1 night and rebook it at $150. Even worse, if I book a 3 night stay Th-Sun but need to drop 1 night, hotels often won’t let you modify but again tell you to cancel and rebook. But now the Fri & Sat might be much higher priced, or even unavailable. So if you need to drop a night, you may lose being able to reserve at the hotel completely. Irritating as it may be for shorter stays, I’ve started booking single night stays (instead of one 3-4 night stay) for flexibility. I just have to play the ‘checkout-checkin’ game every morning.