We have been monitoring the airfare prices using Google Flights and waiting until we were within the 330 day window for the end of our trip before we could purchase any round trip airfare. I had done some investigation on the possibility of purchasing one-way tickets for each trip, going out to Alaska and returning home.
In the not so distance past, purchasing one-way tickets was cost prohibitive, you were usually charged about 75% of the round trip fare for any one-way segment. Covid has entirely reshaped the way airlines operate, it is more like the pre 9/11 pricing structure, and the biggest change has been that one-way fares are now about 50% of the round trip fare. For our flights, since we were outside the 330 day window, I compared these phantom flights on Google Flights in June, 2023, departing and arriving on a Saturday, to match our timeframes, and picked the same flight times as we were looking to purchase so that we had an accurate representation of similar flights. I priced out both the round trip ticket and the two one-way tickets and found that the round trip ticket was only $15 per person less expensive than purchasing the two one-way tickets. Not bad on a $675 dollar airfare to get to Alaska and back.
Based on this information, I contemplated going ahead and purchasing our flights out to Anchorage as one-way tickets. The concern was that we are travelling on the Saturday before the 4th of July, and we could already see that that Saturday had higher prices than the Saturday before and after, most likely due to a greater demand for tickets for the holiday travel. It was not significantly higher, only $50 per ticket as compared to the Saturday before and after we travel, but higher.
We continued to monitor the prices waiting for the return flight dates to fall within the 330 day window so that we could see the overall costs. In the meantime, Google Flights started to show some significant price increases for flights on days immediately before our trip. Based on the possibility that the fares may go up, we went ahead and purchased the outbound one-way flights to preserve the current pricing.
We were not at risk since we could cancel the flights within 24 hours for a full refund. In addition, since the airlines have removed all change fees, we could easily cancel the flights after 24 hours and receive a credit that we could then use to purchase round trip flights if the pricing was more favorable once the return flights became available. Either way, we could both protect the current price for outbound tickets and go forward with either purchasing one-way return flights or cancelling for credit and using that to purchase round trip flights if it was a better price.
Well, this morning, we entered the 330 day window and the return flights became available. However, the pricing was not good. For most every Saturday in June and the first two Saturday’s in July, the one way return was pricing out at $277 per person, but not today for our Saturday return date. Not only was every flight priced out at $356 or higher, our preferred return time was priced at $407 per person.
We will just wait and see what happens, hopefully the pricing that came out today was higher since we are on a weekend day, airfares do fluctuate based on the day of week. At least we have preserved our outbound flight cost, which did not go up yet. We can at least patiently wait to see if the return flights go down in the next several days.
Airfare is always an interesting thing to deal with but with the relaxed airline policies on refunds and change fees, it is much more flexible than it has been in a long time.
On a side note, we did apply for and get a American Airlines Citi Card when we purchased our outbound one way tickets. It was offering a $200 statement credit for the ticket purchase, and also allows for free bag fees, which would have totaled $120 for the flights for the two of us. That helps with the overall airfare cost. We were not sure if the online application would be accepted for this credit card since we had one previously for our trip to Italy in 2019, and had cancelled it in 2020 when the $99 annual fee was charged to the account after the first free year. However, it went through and now we have those savings. We should also be able to use that benefit in December of this year when we fly back on American Airlines from Ft, Lauderdale after our Transatlantic Cruise on Viking Ocean Cruises. Since the initial flight for the cruise in Transatlantic, with no bag fees, we are not certain about the flight home from Ft. Lauderdale, but anticipate there will be bag fees of $30 per person for our checked luggage.