Originally Posted by
spin88
That makes since, I had HKG-LAX-WAS on the brain for CX/AA, blanked on ORD, and yes, for that flight, not a big deal. However, landing from a 13 hour international flight to a 5.5 hour domestic F flight though is not so great. You want to sleep really badly....
Its a very different experience.
Oh, I agree 100%. SFO-AUS is no fun after I’ve just gotten off of a TPAC. Not worth $2200 to me to be on a lie-flat, but no fun.
Originally Posted by
spin88
It is very interesting to me (and I know you know pricing much better than I do) that one can buy one way premium fares in the US for 1/2 the price of a RT, but you can't on overseas routes.
Aw, I’m flattered.
Seriously, though, the answer is a lack of competition. All of the majors still require Saturday night stays for discount tickets in markets where they can get away with it — F or Y. WN’s biggest disruption to the industry was refusing to follow suit.
If Norwegian is successful in its attempts to make a US foothold, and if an Asian LCC (Air Asia X? Cebu Pacific?) is able to follow suit, you’ll likely see one-way fares start to approach half-round-trip. You’ll also likely see service reductions across the board to compensate.
BTW — your question made me realize that I had failed to price the tickets as two separate one-ways. It’s about $8,500 when done that way, as opposed to $14K for a round-trip multi-carrier ticket. In this case, it’s the combination rules that are causing the biggest problems — you have to go pretty high into the fare table to find a flight that’s combinable, on a single ticket, with a non-JV partner.