My mistake in booking flight to Paris

Sorry, but I don't understand why you would have purchased a one way ticket in the first place. Often your best bet is called a 'multi-city' which would be in one city and out another. All moot at this point, but for future reference, consider that option.
I think Google Flights offers the option to search 'anywhere' and within a month range. Do a reverse as in anywhere from Denver in mid November to see what has direct or affordable flights, then narrow down the cities for the search for the return.
I think air websites seem to use their cookies to find out that you have been checking often, so clean your cache or try a different computer to see if you can get a stable price for Icelandair.
I also use Matrix ITA as a website for viewing flights. You can't buy tickets from the site. It is the old travel agent flight search website, so has more airline options. It might not work as well for your unknown start point, but it's a more stable non partisan site.

When I was searching for September/October flights from Denver to Europe, I was finding the least expensive options (for the cities I was checking) from Frankfurt and from Prague. There is a non-stop Star Alliance (United, Lufthansa, Air Canada, etc) flight from Denver to Frankfurt. The connections with Prague were not as easy, involving long US layovers on the US East Coast. I much prefer to have any layovers in Europe, especially outbound.

I had also found good round-trip prices on British Airways for flights from Denver and connecting through London Heathrow, of course. I wasn't checking one-way tickets.

It's not ikely that you will find a cheap one-way non-stop from Europe to Denver.
Maybe you could fly Norwegian from somewhere in Europe (London?) to either the East Coast or LA or SF and then change to a domestic carrier for the hop back to Denver. It will be a long travel day... but probably not too expensive.

And to Maria -- Norwegian only books it's tickets one way. The price is the same -- it's the way they sell them.
The OP didn't do anything unusual, she just didn't realize why she wasn't seeing return flights posted.

SharYn, thanks for the explanation. We have limited Norwegian service to Canada, so I appreciate the education. Makes much more sense now.

My thoughts are similar to SharYn's. Book a Norwegian flight back to a US city that has good connections to Denver on airlines like Southwest that sell reasonably priced one-way domestic tickets. Not as convenient, but it gets you home for less than a one-way flight on a major airline or a new round trip ticket.

When in in November are you going? Condor/Thomas Cook has flights from Paris to Denver for $473/490 (Economy/Premium) for some dates in November. but it is 3 separate flights, Paris to Manchester to JFK to Denver. You could reduce that to 2 flight legs by traveling to London by Eurostar and spending a couple of nights in England before catching the flight in Manchester. That can reduce the price to $477/$614 for some dates.

I looked at flying to Boston or New York. Flights arrive fairly late in day. Flights to Denver then leave about an hour later. Even with carryons only, short connections late in the day are very risky. Add in a hotel to fly the next day? My, a costly mistake on my part, indeed. Yes, I will keep trying! Thanks for the support.

Do you have any frequent flier miles? The reason I ask is I think that for a one way from Europe to Denver, you may find this the best value.

As others have mentioned, you may need to find a reasonable one way fare to another city in the US and then fly on from there.

The best price /connection I saw was with Icelandair at $696 for a random date in November. 12 hours and flys right into Denver. It does have dynamic pricing so I would expect the price would vary from one day to another. Other possible one way connections were quite a bit longer but were offerred by a combination of Turkish Airlines and United Airlines.

For a trip last fall/winter, I found lots of reasonably priced one-way tickets through Expedia.com that seemed to be priced at half of the round-trip fare on major airlines. Yet those reasonable one-way fares were not available on the major airline websites themselves or anywhere else that I could see. This was a great help to me since we had a very weird itinerary that we could not readily book round-trip tickets or open-jaw tickets for.

I don't know if this will help you, but it's worth a look.

For a one way return flight consider matching a US Norwegian Air hub with a Southwest hub. For example, return to Oakland-San Francisco (OAK) via Norwegian. Southwest hubs at OAK. Southwest flies OAK to DEN every one or two hours with either non-stop or direct flights.

Cross off OAK and use LAX. Looks like Norwegian is dropping OAK.

Try google flights, you can select several cities for the origin and Denver as the destination. Booking on one ticket is safer for making connections rather than two flights on separate tickets.

For example, I found a one way for $417 from Orly with this search. But it’s two stops with 21+ hours travel time. You can explore alternate days and set a price alert. Good luck!

Enjoy the planning and the trip!

We want to fly from somewhere in Europe home to Denver about
mid-November....I looked at flying to Boston or New York. Flights
arrive fairly late in day.

On the Delta website, I just plugged in London Heathrow (LHR), Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG), Amsterdam Schiphol and Frankfurt (FRA) on November 13 since you said you want to fly from "somewhere in Europe" in mid November.

• Virgin Atlantic from LHR to JFK arrives at 12:05pm.
• Delta from LHR to JFK arrives at 1:45pm.
• Delta from LHR to BOS arrives at 12:09pm.
• Delta from CDG to BOS arrives at 12:28pm
• Delta from CDG to JFK arrives at 12:28pm (same time as to BOS)
• Delta from AMS to BOS arrives at 12:23pm
• Delta from AMS to JFK arrives at 1:15pm
• Delta from FRA to JFK arrives at 12:47pm

I just picked one airline's website and came up with 8 arrival times at JFK and Boston between 12:05 and 1:45pm from 4 European airports. These are certainly not "fairly late in the day". I didn't even plug in Atlanta. Let's take a look on the Delta website.

There is a flight from AMS arriving at 1:15pm & at 1:09pm from CDG. So that's 10 midday arrivals from one airline's website. Flights are out there; do the research as I suspect the problem won't be the lack of early flight arrivals but instead lack of affordable one-way fares.

I think SharYn’s advice is excellent and your best bet. Norwegian to a US city.

Another option to consider is a RT ticket from somewhere in Europe to Denver or somewhere in the US. Sometimes the RT is cheaper than a one way. And you just throw away the return to Europe portion.

You already have great advise.

I will and another choice. If you have miles on any frequently flyer program, check out using miles for a one way trip. I have done that 3-4 times when we do a TransAtlantic or TransPacific cruise in one direction.

Think outside the box, you tell me! Yes! I wasn’t thinking of flying to California and then back to Denver. I looked at flights on Norwegian to SFO, but it doesn’t fly there in November, either. Then I looked at flight to LAX. Yes! So we can fly Norwegian CDG to LAX, then Southwest back to Denver. Thank you all!

Get a credit card with miles bonus after spending a certain amount. Then use those miles for a one-way ticket. See Amex gold, or a Delta, AA, or United card. My husband and I each got AA cards and used the 30k miles for our one-way tix over. We came back by ship.
There are plenty of ways to get home.

All booked. Thank you.

Frank, regarding throwing away half of a RT ticket:
the airlines don't like that, are becoming increasingly aware of the tactic, and I have read many travel articles indicating that the airlines could block flyers from future purchases.
I, myself, have never tried it.
Safe travels!

So glad that you were able to get this resolved and that the forum was a help in the process. Happy Travels!

Glad you got your ticket booked!

& I didn't know Norwegian had dropped OAK, at least for its London flights! Good to know. Looks like they are using SFO now, for various reasons. I also didn't know that Norwegian Air ships a lot of salmon to SF.

Probably too late, but if 1942 is a hint at your age, you have lots time for travel, which makes taking a cruise line repositioning cruise (EU to USA) an option. These are raging bargains on price per day.

"Frank, regarding throwing away half of a RT ticket:
the airlines don't like that, are becoming increasingly aware of the tactic, and I have read many travel articles indicating that the airlines could block flyers from future purchases.
I, myself, have never tried it.
Safe travels!"

Source please?

The only time I have read or heard of this is a couple of instances

1. REPEATED attempts. (I know someone who did this for a month or so on one particular route who got caught and told "NO"
2. There's a Lufthansa story floating around where they are suing someone. Details seem missing.

Having done this periodically over my travel career which includes a lot of business travel I don't really worry about it. I figure once a year which probably what OP is looking at your chances of "the airlines even bothering to notice" are non-existent. And it often happens for legit reasons, plans change, family crisis etc. Just don't make a habit of it.

Carol is correct. This is mostly a urban legend about being ban from a airline for skipping a return trip. Skipping a leg of your trip without a good reason will get the rest of your flight cancelled but that is caused by the computer rather than specific action of airline. People miss return trips for all kinds of reasons. And the idea of just selling one way is gain some traction. We just returned from Vancouver on United using two one-way tickets.

Glad your situation worked out.

To the OP — so glad you found a workable solution!

To Tom — very interesting!!

Happy to hear that the fly west then east strategy worked. Ironically the shortest (mileage) route is not the cheapest.

It is only the low-cost carriers like Norwegian, etc. that offer cheap one-way flights. That is why Tom got the results he listed. Legacy carriers like American, British Airways, Lufthansa, etc. want to sell round-trips and price their flights accordingly

Lola -- That may be true 95% of the time but not always. As I stated earlier we flew RT to Vancouver from Denver on United on two one-way tickets that were about $150 less than the RT ticket. Doesn't make any sense.

Personally I think the one way ticket availability will increase especially from the main stream airlines. The inroads made by airlines like Southwest is driving the market. At one time the return portion of a RT ticket was almost free because airlines were trying to fill seats. That is not a problem these days. Waiting for the SW refund policy to be more widely adapted. Depending on the situation we often will book a SW ticket even if it is a slightly more inconvenient schedule wise or even a bit more expensive because of the refund policy on cancelled flights. I have now been burned twice (should have learned the first time) on United flight insurance for a cancelled ticket. So if there is any doubt on the schedule, it is SW ticket.

I should have qualified my comment about legacy carriers and RT pricing by limiting it to international flights between the US and Europe.

A number of airlines offer one-way pricing for domestic flights within the US (and Canada). Alaska and Southwest for sure; I wasn’t aware United would do that be we never fly them.