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The secret of how to beat an expensive one-way ticket #AroundTheWorldTravelTip No.1 

 July 20, 2017

By  Pascal Depuhl

Around the world on a one-way airline ticket

In September I get to fly around the world. I’ve never done that before. Needless to say, I’m very excited! Yes, this is for work, I’m filming an annual meeting of a large company in Vietnam, but being able to travel like this is one of the reasons that I love my job! Now I’ve been traveling for work for that past 25 years across 5 continents (I haven’t been to Australia or Antarctica yet). However, this trip almost didn’t happen, because of a one-way airline ticket, that was just way too expensive!

Put together a one-way airline ticket or three and voila - you're around the world

This trip is posing some unique problems. I’m filming for two different clients, one is a paid job – the annual meeting. The other is a pro-bono personal project, so coordinating travel dates, flights and budgets is a logistical challenge. Oh, just in case you’re wondering pro-bono means I work for free, but the client is still paying all my expenses.

From now until I return home in late September I’m going to be sharing what I’m learning on my blog, and you’ll be able to follow my trip on the blog and on my Instagram account, but let me share one trick with you now, that I learned yesterday:

How to beat the expensive One-Way ticket

round trip vs one-way airline ticket pricesHere’s a flight that’s similar to mine. Each leg of the round trip ticket will cost around $3,700. If I take the same flight outbound flight as a one-way airline ticket, the price for that one flight goes up to $5,900 -! That’s an almost 60% fare increase than the exact same flight on the same day when purchased as part of a round trip airfare.

Makes no sense to me, but that’s how it is. In my case client ‘A’ is paying me for round trip business class airfare to Vietnam, where we are filming for a Fortune 500 company. Client ‘B’ is paying my airfare from Vietnam to Nepal, where I’m filming the project with a humanitarian organization – this project will be similar to the first documentary I filmed.

On Wings Of Hope tells the story of a little boy in Afghanistan, who has his head split open when a motor cycle crashes into him. With no medical treatment available, he will die in the remote mountain village, unless he can be medivac-ed out into Kabul …

one-way airline ticket pricingSolving the expensive one-way airline ticket dilemma

I could just extend my round trip to Vietnam to include the second job’s dates, but I thought that it may be possible to fly out of Nepal. That way I could continue my trek westward, circumnavigating the globe: #bucketlist.

My problem was that I didn’t want to spend almost the whole round trip cost of $7,400 on a $5,900 one-way airline ticket. Doing so would leave me only $1,500 to pay for my trip home. Here’s how you beat the expensive one-way fare. Look at the picture again. The airline wants you to book a return flight. But nobody says that it needs to be in the same class of service. Yup, I booked an economy ticket home for $448. That means my inbound trip now costs $4,120, leaving me $3,280 dollars for my trip back heading west.

Well, now we’re talking. I can find a flight via a lot of different countries back into the US for that kind of money. And I get to fly all the way around the world. All I have to do now is pick the airlines associated with my favorite frequent flyer program.

Choose your frequent flyer program

Oh, speaking of frequent flyer programs, the second leg of my flight that originates on United is with one of my programs frequent flyer programs. All you have to do is call up that airline. Ask them to credit the leg that you’re flying on their airplane to your frequent flyer program. They’ll be happy to do it. If you don’t the miles end up in my United Airlines mileage account and I usually don’t fly them.

Oh and in case you’re wondering, I’m not flying for 4 consecutive days to get around the globe. That’s how much time I’ll be flying in airplanes over the span of the 3-week project.

It’s fly – film – fly – film – fly.

My September sounds like a MasterCard commercial:

Airlines I’ll fly: 6
Distance to be flown: 22,620 miles.
8 flights, 9 airports, 6 countries.
Total time flying: Over 4 days (50+ hours)
Number of film shoots: 2
One #AroundTheWorld adventure!

Having a job (and a family) that lets you do this: #Priceless

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    Pascal Depuhl


    Miami product photographer, video producer, cinematographer and chief mindchanger at Photography by Depuhl

    I love to share the knowledge I've gained over the past two decades. Catching light in motion.

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