DFW to Europe - Question on high fares booking short trips
 

Hey All!

I generally travel to Asia so DFW to Europe bookings I am not as familiar with. I need to make a quick trip to London and planned to fly over on a Wednesday and return on Friday. It seems the price for flights like this are 4700+ for economy. Anytime I extend past 6-7 days, it drops down to 1200. The days I leave doesn't seem to matter, the price is mainly impacted by the duration of the travel and its only the return flight back that jumps through the roof.

Is this normal?

Thanks,
Kevin

Completely normal.

With most US carriers at least, the cheaper fares from the US to Europe always require a Saturday night stay. So it's not necessarily the length of your trip, but the fact that you're not staying over a Saturday night that cause the fare to jump. You could probably go for the same amount of time (1 night), but leave on a Friday and return Sunday and it would be much cheaper as well.

This is definitely different from Asia, in which the cheaper fares sometimes require a minimum stay (3 days, for example), but they rarely require a Saturday night stay.

Yes, absolutely normal. Cheapest fares to Europe generally require roundtrip purchase (check pricing on one-way's and they are also very high) along with a Saturday night stay. Also, the cheaper fares will typically have advance purchase requirements (28 days is fairly typical for the cheaper O fares to Europe). The fare requirements on these cheaper fares are all detailed in the fare rules (which you can find on aa.com prior to checkout or on third party sites like ITA Matrix).

It's a form of fare discrimination between business flyers and leisure flyers. Business flyers often do not want to stay over a weekend because they would rather be home and are less price sensitive than leisure flyers. They also tend to buy their tickets closer-in than leisure flyers. This type of fare discrimination used to also be quite common on domestic fares, but Southwest has squashed it on many routes as their cheap fares do not have any kind of roundtrip or minimum stay requirements (they are all priced as one-way's) and the legacies tend to match Southwest fares and fare rules on routes where they compete. You can still find these fares on legacy airlines on routes where they don't compete with Southwest.

Because you are based in Dallas (where Southwest has a large presence), you won't often run into them unless you fly AA into smaller markets that Southwest does not serve. As a counterpoint, Delta still has many such fares on domestic routes out of DTW because Southwest has a fairly small presence there. The pricing difference between roundtrip and one-way fares on domestic routes is not as extreme as international, but the different fares do in fact still exist on legacy domestic routes.

Thanks much!

I've seen all sorts of combinations for cheaper flights over the years on various airlines including

needing a Saturday night stay - the most common. Some specify the Saturday night must be at the destination not in the air as Saturday turns into Sunday

Needing a Sunday Night Stay

Outbound on a Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday and return on a Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday

Requiring a specific length of stay at the destination of a specific number of nights but not always a Saturday night

You can use the date grid function on google flights to see cheaper days.
If you really need to travel on these days you could consider buying to nested returns (end either get a free second trip or don't use the returns)

It seems that this probably a Saturday night problem - the fare for a short trip would seem to start at around $2600 in Y, but can easily climb into the $4000's. But as soon as you say a Saturday night it drops to $1300.

So, leave on Friday and come back Sunday keeps you in the cheap fare range, but leave Thursday and come back Saturday and you'll pay through the nose.

When are you traveling?

I ddi some random searches on Google flights, and most days Wed out/Fri return DFW-LHR are around $2500.

Sometimes booking a flight like this on AA Vacations (with the cheapest hotel) would help. Cheapest hotel can be booked but no need to check-in.

Are Economy MileSAAver award seats available for your desired flights? If so, just buying the miles from AA on the current promotion would be much cheaper. ;)