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Hey,
I’ve just been looking at flights and first I searched just for an outgoing flight as not sure what day/time I’ll be returning.
The flight was showing at £628 which I thought wow that’s expensive just to go from Manchester to Heathrow.
If I was to search again for exactly the same date BUT this time I add a return date then the exact same flight is now only £439!
I then double checked to make sure the price hadn’t suddenly dropped and search again just for the outbound flight and again it was showing at £628!
Is this normal and fair? i.e. punishing those who don’t book a return flight by charging them a lot more? With the price difference you can get the return flight home for free!
Hey,
I’ve just been looking at flights and first I searched just for an outgoing flight as not sure what day/time I’ll be returning.
The flight was showing at £628 which I thought wow that’s expensive just to go from Manchester to Heathrow.
If I was to search again for exactly the same date BUT this time I add a return date then the exact same flight is now only £439!
I then double checked to make sure the price hadn’t suddenly dropped and search again just for the outbound flight and again it was showing at £628!
Is this normal and fair? i.e. punishing those who don’t book a return flight by charging them a lot more? With the price difference you can get the return flight home for free!
ignore me i’m speaking rubbish
Which route are you looking at, just MAN-LHR? Normally on short haul the sectors can be priced individually and not cost you any more (unlike long haul). Also, which cabin? MAN flights can be very expensive for a 40-minute hop, especially very near to the travel date.
Which route are you looking at, just MAN-LHR? Normally on short haul the sectors can be priced individually and not cost you any more (unlike long haul). Also, which cabin? MAN flights can be very expensive for a 40-minute hop, especially very near to the travel date.
Just MAN to LHR, both economy both the exact same flight/time.
Yes this is normal for legacy carriers such as BA but not with LCCs such as Easyjet and Ryanair.
They also penalise you for not staying over a saturday night. If you add your “return” on the other side of a saturday you’ll be quoted a leisure fare which will be miles cheaper. I used to save £500/week by booking AMS-MAN Fri-Mon, rather than MAN-AMS Mon-Fri. £150 rather than £650.
It’s even more insane when you try and book a transatlantic flight for example. I once was quoted £12,000 one way from Seattle to London when the return was under £3500.
You can “throw away” the other ticket as a one off (plenty of reasons for you not to show up), but don’t make a habit of it.
Have you checked the price of each leg separately, as singles? Sometimes if you book a return the price goes up on one leg and down on the other, but the overall price stays the same.
But both of those are crazy prices when you can get a one-way for as little as £45. Are you trying to book for the most popular time, very soon?
@davefl, just seen your post, but I don’t think this is the case with BA short haul – you can get one-way for under £50 on many routes and it doesn’t matter which day of the week it is.LHR-LAX return with BA:
13 to 15 Nov: £9,070LHR-LAX return with BA:
13 to 19 Nov: £4,990
LAX-LHR return with BA:
15 to 24 Nov: £2,885You save £1,000 by buying 4 flights instead of 2!
Yes, possibly doesn’t apply to domestic but answer is to look at google flights rather than BA’s appalling website.
Not sure if this link will work in the uk but try https://www.google.com/travel/flights/search?tfs=CBwQAhogEgoyMDIzLTEwLTA5KABqBwgBEgNNQU5yBwgBEgNMSFJAAUgBcAGCAQsI____________AZgBAg&tfu=KgIIAw and click price graph.
You can scroll to see that some days are 7x the base price and google shows you the lowest price for the day. The flight you need can be way more expensive but google will alow you to narrow the time bands to give a better result.
@wookie192 has pretty much always been this way (with legacy carriers) that a return is cheaper than a one way.
on BA shorthaul it doesn’t usually work like this except I think when flights get very full. You also have to be careful with the way the BA website displays return fares sometimes – the price you see for the individual legs when searching for a return is likely not the one way price like it would be on Easyjet etc
Always worth checking though and if you’re throwing away the return (more common on longhaul) then worth playing around with different origins / destinations – booking London- New York / Boston-Oslo on a random Wednesday 6 months later may work out cheapest for example.
@wookie192 is this flight for your 5 TP?
Thanks for the responses all. Makes no difference to me on the price as work pay for everything, was more just a surprise when I saw it as not really seen that happen before.
@skywaker it’s not no, I do MAN to LHR quite often for work but on this occasion I don’t know my return date as it could be one of 2 days. Hence why I was looking at just an outbound and then a return and noticed the price difference 🙂
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