“Catch 22,” is a novel by Joseph Heller with a logical paradox at its center — in short, anyone who wants to get out of combat duty by claiming insanity, is actually making a sane choice and thus IS sane enough to stay in combat.
“Catch 22″ became a term used for situations that are logically insolvable. Sometimes that applies to airline tickets.
This ticketing question seems simple — If passengers have two one-way fares for a roundtrip; for example, a roundtrip San Francisco-Boston-San Francisco, should they be ticketed together?
If they are on the same airline, the answer seems obvious — yes. There are certainly advantages. If the ticket is canceled, passengers pay one penalty to reuse it, if they change the return they generally don’t need to fulfill the advance purchase requirements, and if they need receipts for taxes or an expense report, it’s certainly easier for record keeping. Plus, they may avoid the secondary TSA screening that sometimes comes with one-way tickets.
But (and there are always buts), there are situations where one ticket with two one-ways makes airline life harder and more expensive.
For example, if passengers want to change the return before departure. Most airlines require passengers to reissue the entire ticket at the current fare, if there is a change to the return ticket before starting the trip,
So, if someone needs to change the ticket only six days in advance of their outbound, they could pay a much higher fare for the entire ticket, plus the change fee. Even if they have plenty of advance notice on the return and it is the portion that need changing.
In addition, when two one-way tickets are on the same ticket, if travelers need to change the return city, it’s often impossible to change the ticket routing without starting over. This means, again, paying a much higher fare for the whole ticket.
And in the worst case, those with a combined nonrefundable/refundable fare on the same ticket will find that the entire ticketed fare becomes nonrefundable when these two types of tickets are intermingled.
This arcane rule holds true even if the nonrefundable portion is a small part of the overall ticket. Hypothetically, a full-fare business-class cross-country ticket becomes nonrefundable when ticketed together with a bargain nonrefundable shuttle flight in the middle of the trip between New York and Washington, D.C. on a single ticket.
If passengers purchase two one-way tickets they get added flexibility, but the penalty rules apply to both tickets. So, cancellations generally cost $300 to reuse the tickets, instead of $150. Plus, the advance purchase rules also apply independently even if it’s a return flight and there is plenty of space — any changes without the required advance purchase time, results in payment of a penalty plus the new fare.
All the same problems apply and then some with two airlines on the same itinerary. In general, I advise people to ticket two airlines separately, because in addition to the above-mentioned problems, airlines will often refuse to correct a trivial problem, because it was ticketed with another airline. (Name changes and schedule changes for two examples.)
Here’s another wrinkle — If a travel agent has a preferred relationship with a certain airline that might mean special help, all bets are off if there is “other airline” space involved.
Yet, even in these more obvious cases, booking two tickets does risk the higher penalty for complete cancellation, as recently happened with a client who had one ticket on American to Orlando, and a return on United. (We had ticketed separately because he thought he might need to return from a different city, and because he once faced problems with American not being able to make a simple change on a ticket with United space in the past.)
Also, if passengers decide to put two airlines on one ticket, another issue comes up in case of a cancellation — “ticket credits” must be issued to the “validating” carrier. The validating carrier is the carrier that gets the money for the itinerary, and then disperses it to the other carrier(s). This is usually the outbound carrier. However, if your ticket combines say, an AA outbound and UA return, and the traveler usually flys United, the agent should validate the ticket on United.
While this last tip might seem like a bit nit-picky, it won’t feel so foolish for a passenger stuck with a “ticket credit” on an airline they only planned to use for a single trip and don’t plan to use again.
Does this all sound confusing? It is.
There is no single right solution to the problem presented by trying to decide the best way to ticket two one-way airfares. There are advantages and disadvantages to both solutions.
The only time where I think flights absolutely should be ticketed separately is when, as mentioned above, one part of the trip is refundable and the other isn’t. Even then, if those are connecting flights, as opposed to two one-way trips, there may be a problem checking luggage all the way through.
See what I mean about Catch 22?
