Found A Way to Save Money on Airfare

[evolutiondob]

I am scheduled for a Thanksgiving cruise on Carnival (November 17-24). I had been searching over the last few weeks for airfare only to find that flights are pretty expensive during the Thanksgiving season. I live in Virginia and on average I was seeing fares between $280 and $400 roundtrip and often the timing on one leg of the trip wasn't too my liking (outbound either too early or too late). I recalled thinking I wished I could combine the timing I saw on two separate flights on two separate airlines to create my ideal itinerary. It was at that point I thought perhaps I should look at purchasing two one way tickets.

 

Well, that thought definitely helped me to hit the jackpot. Not only was I able to get the ideal itinerary, but the total amount of my flight was only $178 roundtrip!!

 

I know this isn't an option for everyone and I also realize that not in every case will the price be less expensive, but if you're having difficulty finding a reasonable fare perhaps you can check and see if this can work for you.

 

I also found that if you were willing to, for example, fly into Miami and then leave out of Ft. Lauderdale, that the one way option also produced some very inexpensive tickets.

[mollyeilis]

I've found that one-ways seem to work out fine on Southwest, but on other airlines it can be tricky or even impossible to get good one-way deals. What airline were you using?

[pms4104]

For our upcoming December 11-21 cruise ex FLL we booked two one-way tickets, AA ORD/FLL and UA FLL/ORD ... expected fares to be a tad high, as we were returning Christmas holiday weekend. AA roundtrips were over $300 and, altho UA was cheaper, we didn't like the departure times out of ORD. Scored one-ways that total $228pp roundtrip. Well ... then UA realized it was a holiday lead-in period, and their December 21 prices have since gone up. Sometimes just playing with different dates, as well as one-way options, yields some good prices.

[evolutiondob]

I purchased one ticket from Delta Airlines and the base far was $59, but with taxes, fees, etc., it came up to $79.80. The other one way was with U.S. Airways.

[lvtotrvl1]

Be ready to spend some time with Security. One way tickets, or flying into one airport, out of another is a major trigger to them. Get to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Happened to me a couple of times...Long wait checking in, pulled out of line for complete search and another search at the gate.

[pms4104]

So maybe when we fly on our one-ways I can at least use my security badge to get thru the employee line at the ORD checkpoint ... while my husband goes thru a full body-cavity search. FLL will be fun for both of us. One would hope that if you could prove you actually bought a round-trip as two one-ways they'd cut some slack.

[JJPNYC]

One way to get around the "one-way designation" is to have both one-way tickets purchased on the same itinerary. You'll need a travel agent to do this (or you can do it via the online travel sites), but this will show up as a round trip itinerary.

[evolutiondob]

some hitch when it comes to saving money, lol. I'll be sure to show up at the airport extra early.

[Pumbaamd]

We've done it several times. Flew in to MIA on one airline, flew home from FLL on another. It worked fine, and no extra security search.

Rick

[WillieBluffU]

Never thought of looking this way.

 

Its worth a try!