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!
ESH
Washington state 11/1/09
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Sure, as long as you don't expect to use the return ticket back to LAX, you should be okay. The airlines hate this, but have really no way to enforce it. The German can stay as long as we wants at home with no immigration worries, and I don't think Lufthansa will send out the police to drag them back to the airport. Worst case is Lufthansa will try to bill the credit card for the difference, but that's real rare. Don't book with a local travel agency, they might get charged back for the ticket. Do it online.
And the return portion CAN be changed later within one year, however the remain value will be be below zero in some cases! Cancel the rez for the return AFTER they fly to Germany and it should be good.
Too bad you missed the Lufthansa sale last week.
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,-