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.