This simply doesn't make economic sense.

[randomness]

It is kind of odd when two one way flights are cheaper than a round trip to and from the same airports on the same days.

Not unheard of, but odd.

Comments

[frotz.livejournal.com]

That's each way. (Huh, even for the weekend. My standard search is Boston to the SF bay; I could go to SF tomorrow for $271 and fly back Saturday for $259. Adding a month to the search window (so, mid-June), same days of the week, and it's still over $200. In both cases early-in-the-week weekdays are cheaper.)

[frotz.livejournal.com]

Sure. Other useful things to know: the market changes quickly. For the kinds of high-flux domestic stuff I usually deal with, I'll be checking often and booking quickly if availability opens up; odds are anything really shiny will be gone in 20 minutes. On the bright side, you usually have a day to change your mind, since for the most part anyone selling airline tickets in the US is required by law to give you 24 hours of wiggle room. Airlines do this differently, though; on Delta, say, you can just go to the web site within 24 hours, put in your PNR, and click "cancel", and they'll refund you. On American, though, once you buy the ticket there is no going back, but they will give you a 24-hour hold for free. JetBlue and United also do 24-hour refunds, but last I checked they required a phone call and a long time on hole to cancel. (The 24-hour law also doesn't apply if you're booking something less than a week out, but many airlines keep is as a blanket policy.) Alaska is super-awesome; not only can you cancel online, but if the fare goes down between booking and your flight, you can go click something that says "hey, it got cheaper, give me a credit for the difference!" Booking near the beginning of the week (Monday-Wednesday is the usual advice, but I've found Sunday sometimes good) is usually better than other times; there's a recent WSJ article about this that's interesting reading, but I think it amounts to "there's less competition from leisure travelers who think about it on weekends, airline fare sales traditionally get posted on Tuesday, and the people at the airlines who otherwise manage capacity are at work on weekdays and actively opening up cheaper capacity to get asses in seats".

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

That's also cheaper than the round-trip.

Two one-ways:

BOS->SFO, Thursday 15 May
$271, American (PHL) or AirTran (ATL)

SFO->BOS, Saturday 17 May
$258, Sun Country (MSP)

Total: $529

Cheapest displayed round-trip:
BOS-PHL-SFO, SFO-DFW-BOS
$542, American