Cancel return leg of roundtrip
 

The situation: Booked on united.com a roundtrip ticket on Lufthansa within Europe. Took the outbound flight but won't be on the return. A one-way ticket for the outbound alone would have been about $1,100. The roundtrip cost $400. What happens when I cancel the return flight after taking the outbound? Could I be charged another $700? Or will nothing happen?

Standard advice is there will be no problems or claw-back for this one-time change. Probably best to call and cancel but have "no return date in mind yet." Don't really mention you never plan to use the ticket.

Doing this on a regular basis could create an issue.

Agreed, though I disagree on the other advice. Just no-show the flight and ignore it IMO.

Thanks for the feedback. I almost did something like this last summer but decided to "save" the chit for another time. Glad I did as the price difference this time is huge.

Last summer I wanted to fly JFK-LAX. Flying JFK-SFO-BUR (Burbank) one-way was much cheaper than JFK-LAX. Also, flying JFK-LAX-SJC (San Jose) was cheaper than JFK-LAX (or JFK-SFO). No logic to this. The least expensive and most direct option would have me booking JFK-LAX-SJC and skipping the LAX-SJC part.

I ended up booking the JFK-SFO-BUR to save money, not skip a leg and save the "chit" for the future. When I got to JFK I tried to do a change but all the JFK-LAX flights were booked in economy. So I flew to SFO and when I got there went to a gate flying to LAX (instead of waiting hours for the scheduled BUR flight). They put me on the LAX flight with no problem so it worked out in the end, except for the SFO detour.

Oh, there is certainty logic about this, but if you are thinking there is a cost and price should be related only to costs -- that is not what is logically, in business parlance.

Airline pricing is all about maximizing revenue in a multi-competitor environment. It is not about costs or routings but rather maximizing the profits moving customers from A to B. Each market is looked at independently -- assuming most customers will not look at alternatives airports. This is a complex pricing system with many factors (types of customers, competitive situation, cargo, load factors, barrier to selecting alternatives, ..)

Look up Value Based Pricing as just one methods for doing this.

Nothing happens. You have a credit for one year on the segment you didn't take. There will be a change fee if you choose to use the credit and any additional cost the new segment will be.

You generally only have a credit if you inform the carrier in advance of the flight that you won't be taking it. If you simply no-show then there is no residual value.

In theory they could send you a bill for $700, but they certainly have no legal right to just hit your CC with it. To enforce the issue they would need to go to court,

In reality, there is 0 chance of this being an issue.

I do think you should call and cancel. Just like if you have a reservation for dinner and can not make it.

Isn't it in the fine print somewhere that they can charge you for it? If that is the case, then they would have a legal right to hit you with the charge.

There are lots of illogical bits to airline pricing that I don't understand, but can occasionally get the briefest glimpse of the rational for it. Something about pricing power on some routes versus other routes, etc.

The thing I will never understand is how international one-ways often price at double, triple, or even more times the round trip price for the same route. It seems to almost always force a Y or B fare. Given that people can always throw away a return, why would they ever price one-way so high.

I never quite understood why either. Maybe they want you to stay with the airline. But I guess it all boils down to their market algorithms.

I've cancelled several round trip return flights and never had an issue. I've never done it on purpose though. Most of the time, I booked a personal trip that gets interrupted with a business trip. Since I pay for the personal trip and work pays for the business trip, its easier to drop the ticket then try to expense a change fee.
I've also dropped tickets due to IRROPS where my flight got canceled and there's no good alternatives for several days so I switch airlines, but I don't think that counts.

The enabling factor is that airlines, like other multi-facted businesses, can take the profit from one service or product and use it to cover the losses on another. If you strictly decouple revenue from cost, there's lots more flexibility on what the customer can be charged.

The lower RT fare is of a different fare code than the more expensive OW, so it is not exactly correct to say it is cheaper. It more likely will have more restrictions, less flexibility and ability for a refund. It also puts you in a lower priority at upgrade waitlist when everything else is equal. I have yet to see a OW ticket not cheaper than a RT one with the same fare code.

This is true. However, it's worth noting that with UA, we could actually use the credits. With CO, it's been my experience that they tell you there is a credit but won't allow you to use it.

I had a similar situation as OP. It took months of effort will I found anyone willing to even look at my PNR. Front-line staff just said "there's nothing I can do" and eventually after fighting for months to get the right escalation, they gave me so many constraints that, best case, I'd pay 3x as much as the residual just for the right to use the residual.

Effectively, CO pockets the money. Let's be real about this.

Sure, but the fare code is irrelevant to the bottom line cost of the purchase. You simply can't buy a K fare one-way to Europe from the US for example.