fanger

Recently I ticketed some intra-Europe trips and had the following interesting observations:

1) after being used to booking one-ways domestically, I almost screwed myself by doing so on the following trip: MAD-LIS; LIS-BCN. It was less then half the price of what two one-ways would have been (on TAP). TAP website was able to charge me in USD.

2) I needed one more flight on Spanair to close the loop. Pricing it out on ITA I was getting $70-72; going to Spanair.com there was an option at about $57 (calculating the Euro exchange myself). Spanair appeared not to have any provision to checkout in USD. However buying on Spanair.com required document entry and I didn't have the relevant passport info on hand. I then checked:

Orbitz.com: All-in price of $81 each, which even including a $7-10 fee per ticket (seemed higher than my NA-Europe $7 fee?) clearly was not getting the same rate.

Vayama.com: Similar to orbitz but $86 each.

Finally tried Travelocity.com, and got almost exactly the $57 price. Didn't even obviously charge a booking fee.

Anybody else have similar experiences?

Kewldude21

I use Kayak.com intra Europe

adabsurdum

I had a similar experience trying to book a one way fare from CDG to VIE for this coming March. The cheapest I could find was over $200 on LOT Polish. I found a RT ticket, departing on the same day, for about $120 on Austrian Airlines. (Their one way was even pricier than on LOT.). We won't use the return portion, booked for a week later, but we booked the RT.

fanger

I received a customer service message from Orbitz explaining that inventory changes quickly and that they don't charge more than they need to for a given flight. I accept this explanation; my observation really was that they didn't seem to see the available inventory in this case. They offered me a goodwill credit on a future booking, which I appreciate, as I will continue to use Orbitz when it meets my needs in the future.

However, it's clear to me that in this case of the Spanair booking, there was a discrepancy between what many sites were seeing and what was offered. The lowest bucket available on Spanair.com was available also on Travelocity and Expedia, but not Orbitz and Vayama. In addition, on this particular booking, I don't seem to have been charged an international booking fee by Travelocity. I am pretty sure that they normally charge a fee for international multi-city bookings, but am not 100% sure.

Anybody have similar experiences to share?

michael9

The difference between intra-US and intra-EURO travel is that in the US one is used to one-way tickets and in Europe one isn't (yet). Only the low-cost carriers in Europe (Easyjet/Ryanair etc) only do one-way tickets but the general carriers see people that use one-way tickets automatically as business travelers and will charge 2 to 3 times as much as a cheap return (holiday) ticket (which generally has a compulsory sa/su night in it to avoid that business travelers use it).

This situation is far outdated and broken now by the LCC within Europe
and transatlantic by Icelandair and Aer Lingus.

Expect this situation to change in the following years and expect in the meanwhile that booking a return and only using the outwards leg is often cheaper than a one-way ticket.

ps. kayak is a good choice as it includes most EURO LCC's but better avoid the ITA MATRIX.

JohnAx

I presume you don't realize the airline is within their right to charge you the higher fare if you don't use the r/t as intended?

It's not likely to happen - apparently 'never' has, according to anecdote. But if it becomes common practice one of them might get the idea that they're being taken advantage of and take action.

michael9

I realize myself this but If you use only leg A and one keeps his mouth when checking in on the airport it works fine. But indeed it's not completely fair use.

Carolinian

Be very careful when an airline or any other internet entity offers to price your purchase in dollars instead of local currency. What you very often pay for that ''convenience'' is a really awful exchange rate. And if you have a credit card other than CapOne or the handful of others that do not charge a foreign transaction charge, pricing it in dollars does not even save you from that charge. It is much safer to leave the charge in local currency. On some, like RyanAir, the website will automatically make the conversion at an awful rate unless you search out the box you need to uncheck.

PVDtoDEL

+1

fanger

This is very good advice. I maintain a Capital One Mastercard in order to avoid these problems. This and a few other cards/companies do have favorable foreign exchange treatment compared to most cards. I would have used this to purchase from Spanair.com directly.

However, when I use US-based websites (Priceline, Hotwire, Travelocity, Orbitz, etc) and they quote in dollars, my experience is that it is charged directly in dollars for the amount quoted. In this particular case, Travelocity appeared to be offering the ticket in USD within <1% difference of the day's euro:dollar rate.

PVDtoDEL

Certainly some airlines/websites will convert fairly, but you should always check...