Roundtrip Air vs. One Way: Issues/Concerns

Have you tried contacting the cruise line for a decent airfare? I've purchased a round trip ticket for an intra-European flight with pricing far superior to a one-way ticket. After completing the first leg, I just tossed the return ticket...no problem. I also am familiar with a situation in which one of my relatives was unable to make the non-refundable booked flight home from Europe and called the airline to advise of the no show. OK. No refund etc., of course.

Airlines don't like it, but it's a fairly common practice to book roundtrip (being sure to start in the correct direction) and only use the first leg. People miss flights for various reasons and airlines are happy to keep their money.

There are certain budget airlines where a one way ticket is around half the Round trip price. In particular Icelandair and Aer Lingus often do this. You might check to see what they offer. You didn't mention to where you are flying in the U.S.

If you buy a round trip ticket and throwaway the second half you are technically violating the Contract of carriage. If you read this, you will see what the potential penalty could be. In reality, the airlines don't typically enforce.

According to the people on Cruise Critic, ChoiceAir (or whatever your cruise line calls it) is the way to go for airfare for repositioning cruises.

As long as you're home back in the USA with your luggage...just walk away and forget about the return leg. All those people flying "standby" wanting to go BACK to Europe will greatly appreciate that you didn't show up.

I am also heading to Europe on a one way transatlantic cruise - in my case I am arriving in Rome on April 22nd, then traveling around a bit and flying home on May 15th. It was very hard to find a competitive rate for a one way back to New York. A non-stop flight was at even more of a premium. I used my favorite ticket aggregator website - momondo.com and came up with many possible flight combinations that include the transatlantic flight. Ultimately I settled on an SAS flight from Milan to Copenhagen ($91) and then a Norwegian Air Shuttle transatlantic from Copenhagen to New York ($280). I found that Norwegian is by far the least expensive for a one way flights back from Europe. They fly new 787 Dreamliners and that will be a first for me. Norwegian offers very reasonable flights out of Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, so it as a matter of connecting with the flight from wherever you will be in Europe. When you book with Norwegian, the so called low fare tickets will not include a checked bag or meal - therefore you need to pay the extra $50 and choose a low fare+ ticket. Then you avoid that and they allow one checked 20 kilo (44 lb) bag and the standard carry-on. To get to your departure city such Copenhagen above, you have the low cost options such as Easyjet and Ryanair or a traditional airline such as SAS. I went with SAS because the price was only about $20 more and they dont enforce the baggage restrictions as much as the discount airlines. Other options for a fairly reasonable one way ticket could be Icelandair and Turkish Airlines. The latter is offering some pretty reasonable flights to JFK, but you have to go to Istanbul and switch to their transatlantic flight. Icelandair is better if you are flying out of northern Europe and you would connect in Keflavik.

I investigated Choice Air. It is a Royal Caribbean operated site so I am assuming that you would need to be on one of the lines owned by RC. They own Celebrity and a few others. The prices were really good. On the 5-15 date, the best price on Choice was running about $40 more than my example above. The search did pull up some flights on Norwegian and the extra checked baggage fee didnt seem to be included in their price so keep that in mind.

Where is your cruise leaving from - what US port? How do you plan to get there?

Since Craig lives in Chattanooga, he's probably going to drive 100 miles to the Atlanta airport and catching a budget air carrier down to Ft. Lauderdale.

Getting back to Atlanta is the issue. By far, the cheapest way to get to the southeastern U.S. is Norwegian Air by Ft. Lauderdale or Orlando. The budget air carriers can get you back to most of the major Southeast cities from those cities inexpensively.

What do you consider reasonable? I can get you to and from Europe for $1800 in May - non-stop and one-stop coming home. Call back and talk to us.