$2k vs. $500 on DL out of Europe
 

Any ticket can be a throw away ticket if you don't take the return leg. You have every right to book a return ticket from Europe - I'm assuming given your location that you're a US citizen, so no reason immigration would worry about you heading back to Europe. I've flown plenty of Europe origination return tickets on DL over the past few years without an issue as a US citizen.

The only thing is that DL might (at least theoretically) frown upon you repeatedly throwing away tickets, so if you're going to do this repeatedly, it might be wise to leave your frequent flier number off the reservation.

Book the return leg on a date far in the future. Pick a date you have at least a 1% chance of making.

Don't make this a habit, and you'll be fine.

Delta has no way of knowing what your intentions are, and they aren't going to ask. As long as they get your money they aren't too concerned with what you're going to do with your ticket.

Book the round trip. And like @RRDD said, maybe you can actually fly the return leg if you book it way in the future. Even a chance of changing it with a fee to another day.

All that said. I do take issue with your logic in that a one way is $500 this way. If you're going to throw away the return portion, you just paid $1000 for a one way ticket, not $500. Delta isn't going to give you the other $500 back.

Huh? :confused:

He said the round-trip ticket was $500.

If there happens to be a significant schedule change on JFK-ZRH (unlikely, but possible) before his return, he probably could cancel and get half the $500 back, making the one-way cost only $250.

Plus far enough out there are likely to be schedule changes. If that happens, you can even cancel the return portion (not sure if DL does prorated refunds or what - I believe they do if its an involuntary change) and maybe get some of the $500 fare back.

If not, you can reroute it into something else you want to use, use the credit on any other flight, or just have a legit reason to tell them I'm not using the ticket on the originally scheduled date because of the >60 min schedule changes.

Put it as far in the future as possible, and at some point Delta will change the schedule by >1h and you can try to request a pro-rated refund.

Unless, IDK, you post on a public forum with your name and proposed itinerary stating what your intentions are.

Technically this is a violation of the conditions of carriage, but in practice the chance of enforcement is pretty close to zero.

Maybe the OP should clarify, but he said $500 each, which made it sound like he was referring to the segment cost of the round trip. I suppose this is more a problem with the English language than with anything else. :)

What is ZUR?

I'm assuming ZRH.

But when you assume. :D