Are round-trip airline tickets cheaper than one-way?
Yes, almost always. But at the same time, it’s misleading to say they are “cheaper”. If you plan to go from, say, New York to San Francisco and never come back (or you will be in San Francisco for a long time and don’t know when or what year you will go back to New York), then yes, a one-way ticket is cheaper. But, if you know when you’re going to return to New York, then buy a round trip ticket because while it will be more expensive up front, if you were to buy two one-way tickets, the cost of the two one-way tickets would significantly exceed the cost of the round trip ticket. You could think of buying a round trip ticket like buying the outbound flight at full price and then getting a good discount on the return leg. Example: I flew on short notice from Manila to Tokyo a while back on Delta Airlines. The cost of the MNL-TYO flight was $290. I knew I wasn’t going back to Manila, so the $290 was cheaper than the roundtrip price of $540. But, if I had wanted to return, it would have b
