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LAX to DUS roundtrip cheaper than one way?

I need to book a one way flight from LAX-DUS (Dusseldorf, Germany) the end of December. Using December 25 date, I searched Lufthansa and it seems that it is cheaper to book roundtrip $768 vs. one way $3,719. British Airways roundtrip $1,000 vs. one way $1,600.

Can also fly to and then take train from AMS, FRA (instead of DUS). Best flight is Air Berlin non-stop LAX-DUS, but Air Berlin only offers LAX-DUS from May through Oct.

Does is make sense to book roundtrip instead of one way and any pointers? This is for a German citizen.

thank you for your help!

Posted by
2779 posts

As EU (Schengen) citizen you can enter Germany coming from the US on a one-way ticket. And of course you can also book a round-trip and just not use the return flight - BUT - once you've arrived in Germany do call the airline and cancel the return flight. You want to do this for two reasons: 1) You'll get all the taxes associated with the return flight refunded to your credit card and 2) for your booked return flight US immigration would expect you to arrive on that certain day at this certain airport. If you don't show up you'd make yourself suspicious and risk and even more complicated and lenghthy immigration process once you really want to re-renter the US. On www.travel-overland.de I see a one-way from LAX to DUS on Dec 25th on Bmi for €455,-