Multi-city pricing

[lisa31jane]

Just wondering if anyone can enlighten me on how fares are calculated on a multi-city booking.
i am looking at flying from the Gold Coast (via Sydney of course) to San Francisco but home from Vancouver.
if I price the return fare to SFO it comes up around $2400, to YVR about $2500, but flying in to SFO and out of YVR the price for the exact same dates and same flights is $3770!
Is that usual for this type of booking?

 

[esseeeayeenn]

Disclaimer: I am not a travel agent.
Now that is out of the way ...

Can you see what fare buckets the respective bookings are in?
The cheaper return fares you have seen might be discount fares subject to various conditions.
These might mean they can't be used for an "open jaw" itinerary such as SYD-SFO YVR-SYD (let's leave OOL out of this as it is constant so it can't explain the difference).
The SFO-YVR sector you are NOT flying (as part of this booking) is the "open jaw".
So you might be forced up to a more expensive fare bucket when you try to book the more complex itinerary.

 

[esseeeayeenn]

I don't know the dates you were trying but if you are flexible you should be able to find a cheaper fare.
I tried leaving on 16 May returning 18 June.
Found a OOL-SFO return for $2144.29 in the S fare bucket.
Found a OOL-YVR return for $2403.69 in the S fare bucket.
Found a OOL-SFO YVR-OOL combination for $2293.89 in a mixture of S N & Q fare buckets.
So it doesn't seem to be the case that the open jaw fare will necessarily be higher.

 

[lisa31jane]

It is something I was looking into for after Xmas this year so had plugged in various dates in late December and returning mid January. The multi city ones only come up as a "flex" fare. Maybe I need to wait a few weeks and try it again?

 

[esseeeayeenn]

Late December and mid-January are peak times so it may or may not change.

 

[SYD]

It is something I was looking into for after Xmas this year so had plugged in various dates in late December and returning mid January. The multi city ones only come up as a "flex" fare. Maybe I need to wait a few weeks and try it again?

Double check that the "Best Fare" option is checked. I've found that it defaults to "More Flexible" if you modify the search (when checking different days/flight).

The new sale fares out today might give better results also.