Cheaper flights
 

I constantly have to fly out of ORF to YOW/YUL. Is there any tricks to get these flights little cheaper, maybe like do multi-city or something? I feel i shouldn't have to pay over $700 for a total flight time of 3hours.

Before I checked Google flight, I was thinking of suggesting to fly out of RIC. The cheapest one is around $450. But I do not see $700 for economy tickets. What dates were you looking at?

BTW, you are my neighbor, living in Yorktown (23693).

Ya i use to live in Yorktown 20 years ago. I was actually there 1month ago, a lot has changed!

RIC is just too far for me as ORF is 10minutes from my house! I usually try to fly up there over holiday weekends, outside of that is random dates.

Airfare is independent of distance traveled. Pre-pandemic, it would often be cheaper to fly to Asia than to buy an hour-long domestic flight.

I agree with the other suggestion — try alternate airports, dates, and times. The more flexibility you have, the more likely you are to be able to get a good deal. (Don’t forget PHF, although it’s not a United station). Google Flights / matrix.itasoftware.com can help with the searching process.

Check out this thread: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...-ua-fares.html

ORF-YOW/YUL used to be about $300 round trip. I flew YOW-ORF a few times to complete my China open jaw mileage runs before the pandemic. Now, air fare is not the same as before.

Cheapest fares require 3-week advance purchase and if you are purchasing closer in, that can be a factor. Also, Tue/Wed/Sat travel will generally be lower if you have flexibility. Although we are now in peak summer demand period, so these probably won't help much until the Fall when demand starts to fall off. Other than that, there are roundtrip fares from $231 on IAD-YUL on AC if you are willing to make the drive.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...71ae6fb70c.png

From soemone who has spent tons of time doing various transborder routes several times a year, midsize or smaller Us cities to anywhere in Canada can be pricey. Add the ‘sold out summer’, or whatever they are calling it today, the fact that Canadian routes are not in particular are not back to pre-pandemic capacity, makes it worse. If you fly from an airport with more competition - say NYC-area or ORD, you are going to be a lot better off. Back in the day, when only DL was flying CVG-YYZ nonstop - there were a ton of trips where I paid $600-$700 several weeks in advance, even connecting on UA. This was in the late 2000s and early 2010s, IIRC.

Havent tried this recently, but in the not that distant past, the UA site didn’t always check married segment availability when confirming multi-city searches, so you could sometimes (but not always) get a better deal by searching for, say, ORF-ORD-YOW multicity vs. ORF-YOW. Try that with any connecting hubs that are available.

Also, particularly for Canada, one ‘trick’ I learned to use several years ago was to book separate one-way tickets vs. round trips. This started being cheaper when tickets typically became half the price of a RT for one-way. It’s not always the case on every route, but is definitely more typical than not for within North America now. For domestic flights, this typically gives you two one-way tickets that are the same price as the round trip. For Canada, this results in a lower overall fare. My understanding is it’s mostly to do with taxes - I am under the impression that Canadian HST applies to the total price of a US-Canada round trip, but only to the ex-Canada direction if a one-way. I’m not sure if there are other reasons as well, but I’ve noticed this has saved me about $25-$30/person per trip. Not a ton, especially on a $700 ticket If that’s what you are seeing, but when traveling with a family of 4, it adds up. Also, it will probably save more on higher fares - while many ticket fees/taxes are flat - TSA fee, CBP fees on inBound to US, AIF, etc., HST is a percentage, so cutting the amount of fare it is charged on by more is going to reduce it more.

as already mentioned, being flexible can also help - booking off-peak days/times/flights will probably help even more.

Thanks for the tip guys. I'll try this out

A lot depends on your ultimate destination in Canada, but have you considered the possibility of flying to Burlington VT (BTV) instead of a Canadian airport? RT flights from ORF to BTV run about $390 on United. I have flown to BTV numerous times (though not en route to Canada), and the airport is used heavily by Canadian travelers because of its lower fares to destinations in the USA.

No, it has to do with currency exchange rates. Flights are generally the same price in US and Canadian Dollars in each direction on one-ways. But if you book as a roundtrip ex-US, fares in both directions will be charged entirely in US Dollars. If you book one-way's in each direction, only the ex-US fare will be charged in US Dollars while the return one-way fare will be charged in Canadian Dollars and you benefit from the exchange rate on the return fare. Taxes are fairly close in both cases. There's actually a smallish GST tax (5% -- fare code XG) that applies to ex-CA fares that is not applied to roundtrip ex-US fares, but the exchange rate currently more than overcomes this.