'Open leg' tickets A-B-C, rather than A-B-A are also known as 'Open jaws' routing.
Irrespective of the benefits to the pax, one of the benefits of the Internet - to the cariers - is that they now know what everybody else is charging! Their systems can automatically interrogate (or humans can look) what their competitors are charging on the same, or related routes.
If you see that the other carrier on the same route, say, has put their price up by £10 or £100 do you:-
- Hold your price down to catch more bookings
- Put your price up to catch more money
