Travel Tuesdays: one-way frequent flyer tickets
American, Delta, and United now let frequent flyers book one-way tickets for half the number of miles necessary to book a round trip ticket. But be careful! If you book a one-way award, you’re not getting 50% off a round trip ticket. You’re getting a free trip in one direction. Going the other way is on your dime, and if you’re not careful, that one-way trip may end up costing you as much as a round-trip ticket would have. Do a little shopping before you book both legs on the same airline. It might be cheaper — a lot cheaper — to fly the paid half of your journey on another carrier.
Case in point: I have 30,000 miles on American, enough to cover a one-way trip between the continental US and Europe, which I plan to use for my trip to England later this year. I can’t use the miles on the outbound leg of my trip — there’s no available awards seating for a solid week on either side of the date I need to arrive. By default, therefore, I’m going to be cashing in my miles for my return trip (which is fine; I have a lot more flexibility on dates coming home). But how am I going to get to England in the first place?
I know I can fly into either London Heathrow (LHR) or Manchester (MAN). Both are about two hours from York by train, and if I take a redeye over Saturday night and arrive early Sunday morning, that makes it more than feasible to show up at my lodgings in York in time for my afternoon check-in and orientation. (Alternatively, I could fly in on Saturday, but that would involve the expense and hassle of finding a room for Saturday and then moving lodgings the next day.)
I first checked American’s own fares. A one-way ticket to either LHR or MAN would cost me almost $1000, thus wiping out everything I saved by redeeming miles. Looks like I’ll be taking another airline home.
Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, and Kayak.com all told me I couldn’t get there from here for less than $1000 — but thanks to Airfare Watchdog, I know I can do better. Time to start digging. I went to Booking Buddy, which searches multiple sites at once and lets you compare the results, apples to apples. Here’s the applesauce that emerged, listed by cost:
A site called Cheap Fare Guru said it could get me to LHR on United or Continental for $871.
CheapAir.com: $859 to LHR on United
Webjet: $787 to MAN on bmi
Priceline: $786 to MAN
CheapoAir: $757 to LHR on “major airline” or $803 to MAN on bmi
TripAdvisor: $747 to LHR on United
And then a site I’d never heard of before, OneTravel, popped up with a quote of $633 to MAN on bmi, taxes and fees included. Now we’re talking!
I’m going to do another search later this week to see if I can whittle it down further, but I think I may have found a winner. Stay tuned.
