Travelling in mid October, my husband and I wish to fly into Rome and depart from a northern location as our last stop will be Trieste (approximately 10 day trip). Any suggestions on how to book flights cheaply with this itinerary?. Going in and out of the same city I am seeing good prices, but once I change arrival and departure from different cities the prices double - or more-
Recommendations are appreciated.

What is your departure airport?

Trieste may be a very expensive ending point, and really limits your options. Try Venice or Milan instead as the second city in the open-jaw pair.

Open jaw is not usually all that much more expenseive than a normal round trip (and is sometimes less expensive). Milan and Venice both options for that location, with Venice being closer.

Airfare to Europe is usually calculated as the sum of the outbound itinerary and inbound itinerary. There's no penalty in booking open-jaw. The total prices will depend on what kind of fares are available on each leg.

Very simple example. Say you want to go 10/1 to 10/10. Fly in to Rome (FCO), out of Venice (VCE).

If you search for roundtrip airfare 10/1 to 10/10 FCO/FCO, it may be $800 (totally made up price). That may be $400 + $400.

Same dates, VCE/VCE, it may be $900 ($450 + $450). So, if you check FCO/VCE, you will get a price of $850 ($400 + $450).

You cannot say if that's cheaper or more expensive than a simple roundtrip. It's neither cheaper nor more expensive.

Hi A,

I would fly into Venice or Milan, train to Trieste and depart from Rome.

Prices will be almost the same as RT Rome.

See www.kayak.com

Everybody had very good info. We do open jaw every time we fly to Europe. I just had a thought about if you were using the same airline or a codeshare flight. If you are trying to book on 2 totally different airlines that would be a problem.

Are you booking the arrival and departure as TWO separate purchases? Yes, the price is very high if you do it that way.

The solution is to choose open jaw; HOWEVER, that is NOT the terminology used by booking sites. Here are samples of what option you have to choose to select open jaw: (each under FLIGHT option)

Expedia: Multiple Destinations
Travelocity: Multi-Destinations
Orbitz: Multi-City

thanks to all above with much needed info!