Why is it that the market seems to work fine in a lot of domestic travel (especially the uS, but also in other countries) where you can a round trip price is nothing more than the sum of two one way tickets, but when you travel internationally, the pricing structure still seems way too heavily in favor of getting round trip tickets on one airline. I would love to have more flexible travel where I travel to three or four countries in a row. Some of it can be achieved by layovers. But it is still not flexible at all. It would be nice if international travel was closer to domestic travel in terms of flexibility. Remember, at one time, the same round trip pricing stucture existed domestically only for it to go away as there was no reason to follow such a a stpid system.

As far as the rationale that it encourages a customer to spend more money on the airline by being forced to buy a round trip, why can't they consider that one way flexibility would get the airline some extra business from travelers not tied into round trip pricing with other airlines.