One-way DC-Athens fare $1700 and round-trip $800?
 

I saw this on Orbitz on USAir but other airlines followed suit. How can this be? We want to fly from DC-Athens but return Istanbul-DC. I need 2 one-ways, but the cost seems prohibitive. Any ideas on how I can accomplish this trip without cleaning out my bank account? My vacation starts Sep.12. I prefer flying out of National but Dulles is okay. Thx.

Welcome to Flyertalk. One-way fares are always more expensive than round-trip fares; it's standard practice. Price your trip as a multi-city trip, not two one-ways, and the cost is far from prohibitive. Plugging your trip into Sidestep (IAD-ATH on 12 September, IST-IAD ten days later), I get a low fare of $754 all in... on a combination of Continental, Turkish and United. On the outbound trip you connect via Newark; on the return, via Geneva. But there are hundreds of combinations available, most under $1,000. Visit www.sidestep.com. Good luck.

One-way fares are very high. What you need to do is book what's called an "open-jaw" roundtrip.

On whatever website you use, choose "multiple destinations" then enter DC-Athens and Istanbul-DC.

It will price like a round trip.

Good luck!

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

Not always. It's almost always (IME) true for longer international trips, but many domestic US, intra-EU, etc. flights are priced the same one-way as round-trip. Some airlines price some routes with cheap (half of a r/t) one-way fares but not on others (e.g. Continental LGA-CLE-ORD has cheap one-way tickets, EWR-ORD does not.)

^ What he (?) said.

Many round-trip fares allow for open-jaws (think triangle with the shortest side missing), or even double open-jaws (think of a quadrilateral with the two shortest sides missing). "Shorter" is important; usually the distance between the open cities, in the OP's case ATH and IST, must be shorter than the distance of the flights (DC-ATH and DC-IST). For example, DC-ATH and ATH-IST together would not be considered an open-jaw, it would generally be considered a one-way DC-IST with a stopover in ATH, or could be two one-way tickets.

The "open" part can be at either end: DC-ATH and ATH-NYC would also be an open-jaw. An example of a double-open-jaw would be DC-ATH and IST-NYC.

I think you may be over-explaining. The poor guy just wants a cheap ticket into ATH and returning from IST and doesn't realize there are other ways to do it besides buying two one-way tickets. As AlphaGolf and I both said, just tick the multi-city button and you'll be fine. As for one-way tickets being consistently more expensive, I meant on international trips... because that's what the OP is asking about, not flights to Chicago.

If the open jaw doesn't price out well, the other option is to book a RT from IDA to either ATH or IST and to then buy a second ticket for ATH-IST or vice-versa. On one end this becomes a connection, and because you'll be on two tickets you want to leave plenty of time for the connection since you won't be protected on a later flight if your first leg is delayed.

This would look like:

IAD-ATH on first ticket

spend time in Athens and then

ATH-IST on second ticket

spend time in Istanbul and then

IST-ATH on second ticket
four hour or so layover
ATH-IAD on first ticket

I'm doing something similar next week:

ORD-FRA on UA
FRA-IST...cruise...ATH-MUC-VIE...time in Vienna...FRA on LH
FRA-ORD on UA

Oddly, this doesn't price as well as a basic open-jaw.

12 September outbound, 22 September return:

IAD-ATH RT $792
IAD-IST RT $891
ATH-IST OW: $140

12 September IAD-ATH + 22 September IST-IAD is $754. Go figure.

It sounds like the OP may have land-transit or cruise plans ATH-IST anyway.

Right - I missed that. The other option that works is to buy a RT IST-ATH if cheaper than a one-way, and throw away the SECOND half (never the first leg).

But, in this case the open jaw seems the way to go.

Thanks so much for the explanation of the open jaw. I selected multi-city in Orbitz and the results were a lot better. I will be opting for the DCA-JFK and JFK-Athens and vice versa with Istanbul. And yes, we will be driving/ferrying from Athens-Delphi-Mykonos-Delos-Samos-Kusadasi-Bergama-Troy-Istanbul.:cool: