I travel to my home country once a year to visit family, but have it set up so that my origin for the round trip is the home country (ie XYZ-SFO-XYZ rather than SFO-XYZ-SFO). The ticket is generally half the cost, which adds up when you're traveling with family.
I can only do this because I consistently travel to that same place every year, otherwise I wouldn't be able to swap the origin. It also requires you knowing your dates in advance, but generally, even if I have to change the ticket, it's still much cheaper to pay the difference.
I know that the company did this in the past. E.g. employees often flying from Perth to Frankfurt they did the following:
First trip PER-FRA
Then the office in Frankfurt booked FRA-PER-FRA round trips.
Back then the max time between the first and last flight was 12 months. The ticket was on a fare where rebooking was free.
So whenever the next trip was required the return-leg of the trip was changed and a new return trip was booked.
I thought that airlines will block you from buying a flight from a different country. Often this is liked to credit card issuer country. E.g. you can't buy a flight departing from Australia on a foreign website using an Australian credit card.
I’ve run into this before - last year I was booking flights domestically in Peru paying in soles because it was half the price of booking in USD. I managed to get two of them booked but ended up having to pay the third via a travel agency in USD because the LATAM site simply stopped accepting my USA credit card. I can’t know whether it was some arbitrary security measure or whether their system caught on to me trying to game it and denied me because of it, but they denied both my USA credit card numbers as well as my debit cards.
Please elaborate since this is not clear. Are you actually doing a round trip on SFO-XYZ-SFO but buying two half priced (or lower than half priced) tickets for XYZ-SFO-XYZ (date 1) and XYZ-SFO-XYZ (date 2) and not using one leg on each of those tickets? Long ago I’d read that airlines don’t take this well.
The poster lives in SFO and wants to visit XYZ for a week once a year. Rather than buy SFO->XYZ->SFO tickets (which are packages that consist of “a flight from SFO to XYZ on the 1st of April” and “a flight from XYZ to SFO on the 8th of April”), the poster instead buys XYZ->SFO->XYZ tickets (which are packages that consist of “a flight from XYZ to SFO on the 8th of April” and “a flight from SFO to XYZ on the 1st of April next year”).
Because the poster is repeating this purchase every year, it results in the same long-term flight pattern. However, because they have shifted the airline’s window into those travel patterns by a half step, all of the flights look cheaper to the airline’s pricing algorithm.
The downside of doing this is that, If you have to cancel your delayed flight and it’s been a year since purchase, you will likely forfeit the ticket. If you rebook it immediately, that might not happen.
I had this happen on AA. for legal reasons, I had to book a flight in advance (9 months). had to cancel, but did not immediately rebook. went to rebook 14 months after purchase date and credit has evaporated. (
Maybe. My experience with booking international flights at various schedules from “tomorrow” to “1 year in advance” is that airlines don’t give a discount for booking far in advance, past about one week out it’s all the same. I haven’t investigated thoroughly, though.
Also plausible. Given that even when you book a year in advance you are booking a specific flight time, I don’t see many big efficiency wins for airlines here.
Trade and tariff negotiations between countries comes into play, too. It was a while ago now, but I remember looking at a round trip flight to Sydney from the US. The same two planes, in different order (round to the US from Sydney) was half the price. I hadn't planned a year in advance, so I couldn't pull the trick mentioned above.
This is a common hack with business travel where prices of flights including a Saturday stay are much cheaper (aimed at holidaymakers) than weekday flights (business travel). If you know you will need to travel to XYZ every second week M-F for two months then you buy one two month return SFO-XYZ-SFO and then buy the rest of the flights as 11 day flights back from XYZ Friday to the Monday of the following week (XYZ-SFO-XYZ)
All the tickets include "weekend stays" but you never spend a weekend in XYZ.
The OP may have used a one way ticket or something for the original trip since airlines don't book more than a year out.
Used to do this. Weekly round trip tickets from CA to the US and a longer round trip ticket the other direction surrounding them (or 2 one ways? Don't remember) The airline (Air Canada) got really mad at me and claimed there was a T&C violation. Wasn't my idea but the travel office at my company. Ended up missing a flight while they argued about it.
When I was traveling about once a month for a company, I would just book an extra stop wherever I wanted to visit for the weekend before going home (usually a friend somewhere). I got a free visit to a friend, and the company got a cheaper flight expense because of the Saturday stay. Everybody was happy. I'm even happier now not traveling so much though.
Also curious, since I imagine airlines try to cancel subsequent flights if you didn’t get on the initial flight to ensure someone gets in that seat (at a higher price)
He isn't skipping any flights. He presumably bought a one-way ticket to XYZ years ago, and since then each year he books an XYS->SFO->XYZ roundtrip for a year long "visit" to SFO before returning "home" to XYZ for a little bit before booking another round trip for another year long "visit" back in SFO, and so on.
I was living in DC area but was traveling to Bay Area every week (mon to fri) for work.
I always booked fare in reverse with Friday evening departure (from sfo) and Monday morning ( from DCA) return. A Saturday night “stay” apparently made it a leisure fare which was way cheaper than Monday to Friday fare which was way more expensive. (Like 4x more). [ this was United Airlines btw].
My understanding is that this does not work anymore (at least for US domestic). Airfare are all priced for one way (return fare is just the sum of two legs).
However, difference between what business travelers pay and what leisure travelers pay is huge (see hertz rental prices or Marriott hotel prices for saturday vs Monday).
Just looked up economy London-Singapore return, Sunday-Sunday in economy on BA Aug 7 to Aug 13
and there's space in the 'M' bucket with fare MHNC80S7 which is £510 each eay (plus fees and taxes)
TRAVEL FROM LAST INTERNATIONAL STOPOVER MUST COMMENCE NO
EARLIER THAN THE FIRST SUN AFTER DEPARTURE OF THE FIRST
INTERNATIONAL SECTOR.
Come back a day earlier though, Sunday-Saturday, and you can't use that fare. The cheapest they offer is in the "Y" bucket, YNNC80S1, at £1131.50 each way
That means the extra day in Singapore saves you £1200. (the taxes and fees are the same regardless)
If you travel a lot - especially flexibly - then it is sometimes worth a subscription to expertflyer, which if far faster at seeing rules and availability than traipsing through ITA Matrix.
I used to have the same itinerary more recently, and managed to lower the costs on United by 20-40% by booking overlapping itineraries >7 days long, where I'd:
I do the same traveling between US and Europe. I know I will go back every summer and xmas so my trip originates out of Europe with return trip 6 months later, always cheaper than same flights with origin in USA.
Yes, it looks like traveling outbound from some major hubs is more expensive than from other places. A round trip SFO-XYZ two week ticket can be substantially more expensive than XYZ-SFO round trip for the same period.
Note that depending on when you travel and for how long, a SFO-XYZ-SFO ticket might be more expensive also because it is a shorter ticket (1 month or 3 month ticket) and it hits a high season period ("tourist season"), whereas the XYZ-SFO-XYZ is a long-term ticket (12 months) that avoids (most of) the high season.
I can only do this because I consistently travel to that same place every year, otherwise I wouldn't be able to swap the origin. It also requires you knowing your dates in advance, but generally, even if I have to change the ticket, it's still much cheaper to pay the difference.