4 ms·

This again is market segmentation. When I was flying a lot as a management consultant, even when flying somewhere and back, the times mattered more to me than t

This again is market segmentation. When I was flying a lot as a management consultant, even when flying somewhere and back, the times mattered more to me than the airline so I'd often do 1-ways on different airlines and didn't care that it cost ~$1k 1-way for a domestic airline. Also often, I was hopping from place to place using 1-ways.

kevindong 9y ago
I understand the economic rationale behind this, but I would think that there's automated tools to exploit this segmentation. It'd just be a simple function call to determine if there is any round trip flight (with a certain one-way segment) that's cheaper than the one-way segment alone. --- I stumbled upon this strangeness while planning out a vacation. I'm basically hopping through Europe so I was buying several one way flights. I accidentally clicked the roundtrip button once and noticed that the prices, in general, seemed lower than the one way. So I checked and lo and behold: they were lower. I ultimately just went with Ryanair because their prices were literally a third of what the next lowest carrier wanted (~$35 vs. ~$120).
- jen20 9y ago
  You have to be careful of this - airlines look for people using the so-called "throwaway ticketing" strategy, and reserve the right to close your frequent flier account. I'm not sure it happens often, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility. Flyertalk[1] is a good place to research this more. [1]: http://flyertalk.com/ http://flyertalk.com/
  - kevindong 9y ago
    It's definitely possible. But things happen and people miss flights. Unless I do this several times a year on the same airline, how would they ever be able to tell the difference between intentionally and unintentionally missing the return flight?
    - philipodonnell 9y ago
      The people that would really benefit the most from this are people who would use it a lot on the same airline (read: business travelers milking those FF miles), i.e., the people to be most noticeable for the airline and the people with the most to lose from being discovered. They're not that worried about regular folks doing it once or twice a year.
- dcole2929 9y ago
  https://skiplagged.com/ https://skiplagged.com/ I use this all the time. It is recommended though when flying this way to not use rewards/ff accounts because they can be closed and to not check baggage because it won't end up in the right place.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

kevindong 9y ago

I understand the economic rationale behind this, but I would think that there's automated tools to exploit this segmentation. It'd just be a simple function call to determine if there is any round trip flight (with a certain one-way segment) that's cheaper than the one-way segment alone. --- I stumbled upon this strangeness while planning out a vacation. I'm basically hopping through Europe so I was buying several one way flights. I accidentally clicked the roundtrip button once and noticed that the prices, in general, seemed lower than the one way. So I checked and lo and behold: they were lower. I ultimately just went with Ryanair because their prices were literally a third of what the next lowest carrier wanted (~$35 vs. ~$120).

jen20 9y ago
You have to be careful of this - airlines look for people using the so-called "throwaway ticketing" strategy, and reserve the right to close your frequent flier account. I'm not sure it happens often, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility. Flyertalk[1] is a good place to research this more. [1]: http://flyertalk.com/ http://flyertalk.com/
- kevindong 9y ago
  It's definitely possible. But things happen and people miss flights. Unless I do this several times a year on the same airline, how would they ever be able to tell the difference between intentionally and unintentionally missing the return flight?
  - philipodonnell 9y ago
    The people that would really benefit the most from this are people who would use it a lot on the same airline (read: business travelers milking those FF miles), i.e., the people to be most noticeable for the airline and the people with the most to lose from being discovered. They're not that worried about regular folks doing it once or twice a year.
dcole2929 9y ago
https://skiplagged.com/ https://skiplagged.com/ I use this all the time. It is recommended though when flying this way to not use rewards/ff accounts because they can be closed and to not check baggage because it won't end up in the right place.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]