Originally Posted by
thadocta
There is also the ridiculous situation, peculiar to the US, where a return ticket (with certain conditions, such as staying away over a weekend) is cheaper than two one-ways.
This encourages people travelling one-way try to on-sell the return portion of the trip, which then encourages identity fraud.
That's exactly how things worked when I was a kid; the newspaper classifieds were chalked full of "3/31, bos-lax, y class" and the like. But, if that does happen now, it's on a much smaller scale and probably mostly in family. (BTW, there is a facebook group for people that share my exact name with 100+ members.)
Of course, if you could get a decent fare system, which did not require people to purchase return fares (which are cheaper than one-way fares) then this would not be required.
For the most part, the vast majority domestic fares are priced on a one way basis now, and have been for the past ~5 years. International fares are often cheaper round trip, but this phenomenon is not unique to the US (e.g. same deal ex-China).