Question: Will I pay different taxes on one way vs multi city flights?
Our question of the week: will I pay different taxes on one way vs multi city flights? In our question of the week, we look at whether booking flights separately or together will be cheaper.
The Question
Our question of the week comes from Jen in our Facebook group.
Jen asked a long question with dates and itineraries, but the gist of her question is this:
If I buy separate 1-way tickets, will I pay less taxes & fees on a one way vs multi city award booking?
Taxes & Fees On One Way Vs Multi City Flights
We’ve covered different aspects of fees and taxes on award flights before. Some countries limit these fees by law. Additionally, some award programs don’t charge extra fees, while others do.
With that as a background, are there advantages to booking a one way vs multi city award ticket? Could you save money on the cash portion of your ticket? Let’s look at a theoretical booking to find out.
Separate One-Way Bookings
Using United, since they don’t add extra fees, we can see the required taxes on an award flight. First, we’ll try making separate one-way bookings for a flight over the ocean to Europe. We’ll then return from a separate city, so we’ll have a 1-way home from a different city.
On the outbound flight, we will pay only the mandatory $5.60 in government taxes.
If we return home from a different city, we see the applicable taxes. These fees & taxes total $126.55.
Multi-City Booking
What if we take the above flights and make a multi-city booking? Will we pay more or less in taxes & fees?
The cash portion of the ticket is exactly the same. $5.60 + $126.55 for the separate one-way bookings above adds up to $132.15. That’s the same number we see on the multi-city award.
Round-Trip Booking
Just for the sake of comparison, here is a round-trip booking. If we make a round-trip booking to Rome (the outbound flight in our example above), it further demonstrates that cash portions of tickets don’t change.
The cash portion on our outbound flight was $5.60. The return flight shows $64.25. A round-trip ticket has $69.85 as the cash portion. The numbers are the same either way.
Final Thoughts
It would be nice if you could save money with one type of booking over another. Booking one way vs multi city won’t change the taxes & fees you’ll pay. The only way to affect the cash price on your award ticket is routing. Taking direct flights or avoiding countries with higher fees (looking at you, England!) for your connections can reduce the cash price on your award ticket.
Lower Spend - Chase Ink Business Preferred® 100K!
Chase Ink Business Preferred® is a powerful card that earns 3X Ultimate Rewards points in a broad range of business categories on the first $150K in spend per year. Right now earn 100K Chase Ultimate Rewards points after Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
[…] Do Taxes Differ On Award Flights?: When booking separate one way awards vs a multi-city award, do your taxes differ? That’s a good question as we are always trying to save money and points. The results from this test may surprise you. […]
Booking two one ways if you originate in the US using British Airways Avios to anywhere in Europe is significantly less than booking a round trip. About $500 less in Business class.
I found booking award one ways to/from London on Virgin Atlantic comes out to much lower fees than booking roundtrip award tickets.