marronn

Everyone says it is more expediant to fly in one city and fly out another if you are travelling wide areas,I am confused as to the least expensive way to do this,one way each way or ??? Thank you

doug_stallings

It's called an open-jaw ticket (a round-trip flight on a single airline but with different entry and exit points), but it's not at all certain that's the cheapest way to arrange such travel.

You might find it cheaper to enter on a one-way ticket to a destination and exit on a completely different ticket (perhaps on a different airline) from your exit point. The only way to know is to price the itinerary in different ways, but it's no longer a fore-gone conclusion that a round-trip ticket is always the cheapest option.

This is especially true if you want to use miles. You may find a one-way trip for fewer miles but nothing available on the return, in which case it can be cheaper to use miles one way and pay for the return.

Southam

It's easy. Use an airline site or an Internet agency such as Kayak, Orbitz, Cheapoair etc. Most have route planning that includes a "multi-destination" or +"multi-city" option. Click on it and enter your request. The site will offer combinations and show the prices. They compete, so what Orbitz (for instance) shows may not be the same as what an airline itself suggests, and no one site covers every possibility. Do your shopping. To plan this on your own, using one-way tickets, will be vastly more expensive.

MrNuke

"I am confused as to the least expensive way to do this,one way each way"

Absolutely not (99% of the time) as the previous response indicate. To understand why, you need to know a little bit about how the majority of airlines work fare wise. If you book a round trip from say the New York to Paris your trip will consist of a New York to Paris fare on a round-trip ticket and a Paris to New York fare on a round-trip ticket.

For the majority of airlines if you try and book a separate one way ticket from New York to Paris and Paris back to New York they'll bump the booking class of the ticket up to an unrestricted full-fare economy ticket on a one-way fare. This typically means hundreds or thousands more dollars than booking a round-trip.

Flying into one city and out of the others isn't much different. As already noted, booking sites and airlines have mufti-city/destination options on their websites. Say instead of New York to Paris round-trip we wanted to fly New York to Paris returning back to New York from Rome. The booking sites/airlines will construct a valid itinerary that consists of 1/2 round-trip NYC-CDG fare and a 1/2 round-trip FCO-NYC fare. 99% of the time that works out to be advantageous to the consumer.

@Doug_Stallings,
"but it's no longer a fore-gone conclusion that a round-trip ticket is always the cheapest option."

I agree to an extent. There are inter-Asian flights for exampe were sometimes two one-way tickets work out to be cheaper than a round-trip. There are highly competitive U.S. markets like NYC-LAX where a round-trip ticket is actually almost always two one-way fares (not you aren't saving anything in this instance by booking two one-way fares, but it can give you flexibility with different carriers for the same price). Generally speaking though, I still think in the vast majority of situations, I still think it is pretty much a forgone conclusion that booking a round-trip ticket is going to be cheaper than two one-way tickets.

gail

I book frequent business travel itineraries for my husband and have found for almost all trips within US, there is no price advantage to booking RT, and often can get a better schedule and/or cost by booking one-way tickets; some of his trips involve multiple cities and some are simple RT to one city. I research on kayak to find which airlines serve what cities and then check on individual airline website. Sometimes quite tedious, but often well worth the money saved.

Internationally, it is almost always much more expensive to book 2 one-ways than a RT.

Melnq8

I've just booked two one way tickets to/from New Zealand, because the cost of a return on an open jaw itinerary was considerably more expensive (same airline).

You don't say where you're traveling, but FYI if it's in Australia or NZ, the airlines here tend to price their tickets one way anyway, and there's often no price incentive to book return tickets.

marronn

Wow, thank you,really appreciate the education,needing to fly L.A.-Rome and then maybe Wien or Munich return,mid march/april. Will now know where to start!

MrNuke

I think on that itinerary you are in all likelihood going to find out the multi-city option is cheaper than one way tickets. The only question, and this is where you'll want to price it out both ways is whether to build the Rome to Vienna or Rome to Munich ticket into your original multi-city ticket or to purchase a one-way ticket for that leg.