One way weirdness

I'm looking to take a cruise in the next year or so. Found an awesome deal. The ship departs relatively close to where I live, and ends up in South America. But, when I was looking at flights, I found it's much, much cheaper to book a round trip to South America than it is to book a one-way flight home. The round trip is about $850, while a one way is about $1300. I don't fly much - is this common? Is there any reason I can't just book the round trip and use only one leg of it? Can I bank the unused leg and use it toward a future flight? It just defies all common sense.

 

in today's security-conscious world, they probably wouldn't take kindly to you trying to take the return trip after being a no-show on the flight to s. america.

 

From my understanding, you cannot book a round-trip flight and then not show up. Especially in this case, because they would void your second flight. I think in the fine print there are fees for doing something like this as well.

I completely understand. I am from Dallas originally and to fly home it is almost always cheaper to fly through Dallas on the way to somewhere else then to fly into Dallas and stay there. It's been tempting to book the round trip elsewhere and just get off in Dallas, but I was told that would void the return flights.

 

The only way you could do this is to book the round trip flight starting in South America, then not use the return portion. But yeah, don't let the airline find out you're planning this. They hate when people do this. Also, it probably doesn't matter since you say you don't fly much, but if this were on an airline where you have a lot of FF miles or something, they could goof with that.

 

Southwest lets you do stuff like this and they don't care, though they have told me they prefer if you let them know when you are going to skip a flight so they know if they can get standby folks or not.

Southwest also lets you keep the money and use it whenever you want with no penalty.

I like Southwest.

 

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I thought about doing this, but, I've never dealt with customs, and got to wondering if they'd question such a move.

 

This would be kind of dicey, not here, but possibly going into the South American country. There's probably a 90 percent chance all would go well, but you might want to consider whether that 10 percent chance is worth screwing around with.

 

With most airlines, if you miss a leg of a journey, the rest of your trip is canceled.

 

That's why I said he'd have to make the trip home the first leg of the round trip, which is what could cause problems.

If it was domestic, I'd try it but international--it will probably cause more trouble than it's worth. One thing is to check with a travel agent that specializes in cruises; they might be able to get your deal and know how to get you home.

 

Wife flew one way into this country (at least I hope it's one way )

Was not cheap ($1,200), but round trips were all a little higher ($1400+).