Originally Posted by
benz37
I just booked a trip from SFO to ICN for October. When researching fares, I noticed something quite puzzling. If I purchased one way tickets in each direction, the price was about $500 less than the very same itinerary booked as a roundtrip. The dates, flights, and fare codes (R) were identical. Needless to say, I purchased the one way tickets in each direction. A friend of mine recently encountered a similar phenomenon when researching a booking to Taiwan, so apparently it wasn't an isolated occurrence. Does anyone know why this is? I was certainly happy to save a bunch of money when booking my trip, but remain puzzled by the pricing methodology.
Same thing happened on my flights to / from Tokyo my last trip last month -- WAY cheaper to purchase two one ways than RT -- was about $3k cheaper to book two one ways -- and got WAY more miles that way too.... I think when pricing gets this high -- and changes so frequently -- that sometimes it takes them a while to catch up -- but I don't know that for sure... FWIW -- my ticket was about double the usual price from NYC - TYO...