Flights

[ShouldBeFun]

I'm so confused with trying to book a flight from Heathrow to Singapore on British Airways. The flight is £979 one way but if I select return on a date I know I need to come back to the UK for it comes out at £650 for both flights.

This is bananas. Its the same outbound flight but I get a free flight plus £300 discount for booking a return.

Is this normal or am I going mad?

[nakatago]

I'm so confused with trying to book a flight from Heathrow to Singapore on British Airways. The flight is £979 one way but if I select return on a date I know I need to come back to the UK for it comes out at £650 for both flights.

This is bananas. Its the same outbound flight but I get a free flight plus £300 discount for booking a return.

Is this normal or am I going mad?

Book return then.

[x9200]

A promo for the return and regular price for one way?

[Max Headroom]

Logically, a one-way trip should be about half a return trip, give or take. However, once airlines sell a one-way trip, the onus in on them to ensure that that seat is full for the return leg. It may be or it may not be. In the latter case, it represents a loss.

So they discourage people from buying a one-way trip by making them crazy expensive, i.e. half the price of a return trip plus a stratospheric premium.

With this absurd amount for a single ticket in mind, buying a return trip ticket, even if you have no intention of flying back, now appears a half-decent option.

So you buy a return ticket. Of course in theory the seat on the return leg will be empty in this case too. But at least this empty seat is now covered by the airline.

The best part is that the airline has a chance to double their money by selling your seat again once it turns out you're really a no-show. Some lucky person will be picked from the stand-by queue at the airport to fill your empty seat.

Everybody happy.

[ShouldBeFun]

Cheers. It's bonkers that a non promo return flight is a lot cheaper than a single flight but I'll just buy the return!

[Wd40]

I have noticed this phenomenon with other airlines as well. IIRC, it was with Silkair. Most full service carriers have deals on return tickets and the pricing changes vis-a-vis single tickets. Its only budget carriers that price each leg completely independent of the other.

[BoroBoy]

I had the same story with ba when I relocated to sg. A single biz class was 3 and a return was 2.5k. Hr would not allow me to buy a return though. Seemed a bit silly to me, it was a win win situation.