One way ticket or return (and miss the flight) ?

[BruceP]

We will be heading off to do Central and South America next September, and will be going via New York (from Manchester) so we can get in the southern states we missed last time round.

But one way flights are nearly twice the price of return flights on all the major airlines.

Does anyone have any experience of what issues may arise with airlines or the US immigration if you fail to make the return trip ?

We are not constrained by the 90 day Visa as we have B2 visas.

The only cheap flights I can see at the moment are with

Aer Lingus
Swiss
Icelandair

With the state of the economy I am a touch wary of paying smaller airlines so far in advance (and after our experience of FlyGlobespan in 2007).

[MountainMan]

Hey Bruce,

You have a couple of options, one is to fly and ditch the return ticket, airline won't care and for immigration you'll have an exit swipe of your passport when you actually leave.

The other is to fly discount airlines one way. Your timing is good, high season ends after September long weekend and kids are back at school so the prices will be lower, New York and surrounding airports (New Jersey, etc.) have a ton of traffic in general so you should have a lot of options to look through to find the cheapest one. Not sure about flights out of Manchester to the US, but I do know that a Canadian discount airline has plenty of flights from Manchester to Canada (Air Transat) so options should exist to US as well. As for booking far in advance, risk is noted but some to them are more established than others so just pick wisely or wiat until you get closer to the date. Oh, as most standard travel sites don't show discount airlines so you have to dig around a bit to find out the name and go to their actual website.

[BruceP]

Originally Posted by MountainMan

Hey Bruce,

You have a couple of options, one is to fly and ditch the return ticket, airline won't care and for immigration you'll have an exit swipe of your passport when you actually leave.

The other is to fly discount airlines one way. Your timing is good, high season ends after September long weekend and kids are back at school so the prices will be lower, New York and surrounding airports (New Jersey, etc.) have a ton of traffic in general so you should have a lot of options to look through to find the cheapest one. Not sure about flights out of Manchester to the US, but I do know that a Canadian discount airline has plenty of flights from Manchester to Canada (Air Transat) so options should exist to US as well. As for booking far in advance, risk is noted but some to them are more established than others so just pick wisely or wiat until you get closer to the date. Oh, as most standard travel sites don't show discount airlines so you have to dig around a bit to find out the name and go to their actual website.

It just feels sooo wrong though :-)

STA travel and Opodo have Swiss/Icelanair and Aer Lingus, I'm not aware of any other cheap carriers.

[uk_vette]

I have found Continental out of Manchester to be the cheapest for the many times I have traveled.

'vette

[BruceP]

Originally Posted by uk_vette

I have found Continental out of Manchester to be the cheapest for the many times I have traveled.

'vette

Decent prices, but still have the one way fare hike :-)

I need to spend some time checking T&Cs.

[Sheonagh]

We flew to Panama last week with Iberia from London. It was cheaper to buy a one way ticket than a return plus an onward (refundable) one way ticket to Costa Rica. Iberia in London would have denied us boarding otherwise. I have just emailed Trailfinders in UK to cancel the onward ticket and refund us which will take a couple of months. There are cancellation fees but this was our cheapest option. Do the calculation from your own destination. We found Trailfinders very helpful. We booked about 2 weeks before travelling....
Incidentally Panamanian immigration never asked us anything! I appreciate this is not NYC though! However you could always start your journey somewhere else and finish up in the southern states of USA!