Has anyone has any experience in saving money, by flying into one city and flying out of another.
I mean I can go to Expedia and similiar sites and buy a multi city trip, which is very expensive. How can I buy open jaw tickets which will be reasonably priced.
Also, had anyone had any experience in asking Orbitz and other sites to extend your stay at that stop over. For example, I was trying to buy a ticket to Spain and it was flying me through Amsterdam. Is there anyway I can extend that stay for a day or two, instead of catching my connection in a couple of hours.
Thanks guys

We have used open jaw flights several times. They save both money and time. Most recently, we used an open jaw into London and out of Paris in May 2003. While the flight was about $8 more, we saved time and money by not returning to London. If I recall correctly, we found the schedule and fare on Expedia and then called United directly to get our tickets. I believe we saved a bit that way. I do not believe it works if you remain in Amsterdam instead of flying directly home as the airlines consider that a stop.

If you are truly doing a "muti-city" vs the usual "open jaws" (into one location and out of another) then the dates of departure/arrival should be totally controlled by you (in terms of how long you stay in one place before flying on to another). You don't HAVE to fly out of a place on the same day that you arrive so I'm a bit confused as to exactly what you are asking.

Is it the possible fact that by staying somewhere a couple of days and then flying out this raises the fare considerably?

In my experience, open jaws itineraries aren't necessarily a lot more expensive than regular to and froms. But the expense could be due to the lack of competition on air routes which is, ultimately, what drives prices, as opposed to distance traveled, etc.
Price is probably also determined by the days (of the week) you are planning to fly.

Could you possibly supplement the trip by using "budget" carriers to fly within Europe?

Looking up itineraries using Expedia and then going directly to the airline for the issuance of those tickets definitely saves the service charge that Expedia tacks on although by phone a lot of airlines have now added their own service charges.

Open jaw is my favourite way of travel,is very convenient for me to fly this way.

I didn't save a lot of money on the tickets, they were similar in price to same city arrival/departure... but you do save time and expense by not back-tracking on the ground when you really don't want to. I always buy my tickets directly from the airline, either website or by telephone (after researching on the internet). I've gone into Amsterdam out of Geneva. Into Geneva out of Paris. For example.

I often do open-jaw flights and have found reasonable prices on Expedia for this (at least to give an indication of the overall price).

I don't know what the fare rules are for pricing open-jaw flights but when I called BA to book an open-jaw flight recently (which you can't price up on their website) the salesperson said the open-jaw fare was an average of the two return fares to each city. Sure enough when I checked this on their website it pretty much was.

I think they simply call open jaw "multicity" on Expedia or Travelocity, but that's what it is.

I've done them several times and yes I've saved money vs. what it would cost to backtrack (although mainly my time, but that is money to me).

If an openjaw is very expensive on the route you want, I suspect that route is expensive for lots of other reasons or what you are trying to do, it's not because of it being an openjaw. Perhaps the place you are going or returning from is an expensive location for flights, or something else. Clearly if you are flying into London and out of Athens, it is going to be more expensive than RT to London, for example.

I've never bought an openjaw ticket that was expensive for that reason, they were always just the average of the RT fares to the two cities, as noted above. I've never incurred any extra penalty or cost for doing that.

Intrepid, I think what he's talking about is if you are flying Denver to Amsterdam and returning Rome to Denver, your plane going may connect through London. KG6C I think is saying "can we spend a couple days in London before connecting on. The answer is generally NO. Just because you connect flights in a city, that won't give you the same pricing rights if you make it an actual destination.

I have learned recently that you can "trick the system" to at least do an overnight in a connecting city for free simply by requesting a flight to late in the day to connect that same day on to the destination making it necessary to spend the night. But if you try to extend that to a two night stay or longer, you'll usually see your price go up considerably.

I have flown American open jaw Paris/London and once did it when the open jaw flight was cheaper than the round trip via either London or Paris. But I'm not sure it wasn't just a "mistake" on their part.

It's best to book such OJs using an individual airline's site rather than Orbitz et al. If all the segments can be flown on the same airline (e.g., British, Air France, etc.) the uptick for a stopover on one leg of an open-jaw (e.g., JFK-FRA/CDG-LHR-JFK) will be reasonable. If you have to change carriers you will probably pay the point-to-point for the "intermediate" leg, which can get pricey.

You might do well to look at one or more of the low-cost carriers (&quot;LCCs&quot like Easyjet or Ryanair for intermediate flights, or use one of the airpass products sold by <b>one</b>world or Star Alliance for intra-Europe hops rather than trying to through-ticket a complicated itinerary.

Try the multiple destinations menu on American at aa.com, using the search function that allows you to choose flights on AA and <b>one</b>world carriers, rather than AA alone, and see what comes up.

KG6C, some European open-jaw (arrive in one city, leave from another) tickets are actually quite cheap. Northwest Airlines, for example, is very flexible in this regard. If you are interested in Northwest, price your itinerary at http://www.nwa.com/ in case there are some special fares that are not available through third-party Web sites.

In international air travel, a stopover is usually defined as more than 24 hours. Sometimes you can take advantage of this to add a few one-day stops to your itinerary at no extra charge.

Finally, if no single airline/alliance can accommodate your plans at a reasonable cost, try http://beta.itasoftware.com/ . In my experience, that site comes up with some interesting and inexpensive multi-carrier itineraries.

Paul Marcelin-Sampson
Santa Cruz, California, USA

I've used open jaw itineraries several times. As noted, it can be a net savings - time and cost - versus having to travel back to the original arrival city to return home, as long as the cities are in the same region - e.g., London and Paris, not Tokyo Amsterdam. Most airline sites will accommodate this if you click on &quot;multiple stops&quot; or the like. If it doesn't, call the airline. In terms of Expedia or other portals (Travelocity, Orbitz) this i sno different than when booking any other travel - every once in a while you find a fare a bit lower than on the airline's own site, but not usually. I usually fly Continental whenever possible and thus use their site, but if I am willing to use another carrier I try one of the portals then look for the same itinerary on the airline site.

Thanks a bunch everyone, I am will try to search for open jaw tickets now. It is just frustrating caz, I want to fly into Barcelona and fly out of Paris, and the price gets really expensive. I do agree with everyones comments. I guess the hard part is to find a cheap multi-city from the US into Europe, and back to the US from a different city. From my experience, once in Europe it is easier to do trips one way. Anyway guys, please forward me to some useful European sites if you you can.
Thanks

Not sure what you mean about open jaw being expensive. As noted by others they are just 1/2 of the price to each city. Unless by &quot;open jaw&quot; you really do mean multi-city fares: that is A to B to C to A. This is not open jaw - its really 3 separate flights - and will be much more expensive that either an RT or open jaw flight.

The other thing you;re asking about is a free stopover - and I don't know any airlines that offer those anymore.

Some of this depends on what you mean by &quot;expensive.&quot; I just checked on Travelocity, using a departure date of April 5, returning April 20 (just a couple of days selected at random), leaving JFK, arriving Barcelona, then returning from Paris to JFK, for a price of $562.

For the connecting flight from BCN to Paris, for under 50 euros, you could book a flight on between the 15th or the 16th, so you could have a few days in Paris before returning home.

Does that sound expensive to you? Doesn't to me, but everything's relative, isn't it?

I try to find the best bargain and stay flexible around that. For example, in 2002, we planned to visit Germany - mainly the Rhine, Mosel, and Bavaria - but I found a round trip to Amsterdam that was too good to pass up. It meant changing our itinerary somewhat.

We landed in Amsterdam, took the train from under the airport, to Cologne, where we picked up our rental car and then spent a little under three weeks driving across bavaria, and then returning the drive back to Cologne (we got a great round-trip rate from the car rental company, too!).

My point is that we were flexible and found good travel buys, which, in turn, prompted us to shape our itineraries in a way that took good advantage of the air and car rates, while expanding our imaginations about travel options available to us.

To me, it's all part of the game and the fun.

I forgot to mention that the bargain flight to and from Amsterdam reshaped our usual plan of flying open-jaw. We flew in, jumped on a train for Cologne, which was a welcome change after flying from the west coast of the US, and then, at the end of the trip, we returned to Amsterdam, first by car from Rothenburg to Cologne, and then by train to Amsterdam, a few days before our departure, so we had a few days in that city before returning home.

I think Mary Fran may be right -- it may just be a perception or unrealistic expectations about what is expensive. It also depends on what the comparison is -- I wouldn't expect that OJ ticket to be more expensive than RT Paris or RT Barcelona. I thought this was an OJ question, but now it is sounding more like multiple segments on different dates, which is a different thing.

In fact, when I went to Spain last year (open jaw, into Seville and out of Madrid), Air France was one of the cheapest airlines on that ticket for me from Wash DC and their flights go through Paris anyway (coming and going), so I can't imagine returning from Paris on them would be extra expensive.

If Air France doesn't fly from your city, that may not be an option, however, but my ticket was around $500 or $550 for that open jaw last March, so the above fare of around $560 for yours in March seems similar. That is not really expensive for that route and time of year, whether it is open jaw or not. I wouldn't have saved much or anything if I had just done RT Madrid, for example.

You can book reasonable open jaw fares on Travelocity, etc, because they have the same major flights as the airlines' web sites do, plus you can link to other carriers. For example, on my flight, the best schedule was to fly in on British Airway (DC through London to Seville) but out on Continental (Madrid to DC thorugh EWR)), and I did book that open-jaw on Travelocity for that reason. I couldn't book it on either airlines' web site.

From another of your posts, it sounds like you are considering a trip in the middle of your Spain trip to/from Paris for a couple days because of this, and that just doesn't seem like it could save you money. In any case, I don't think your trip is long enough to do a 2-trip to Paris and back from Spain.

We did a Detroit-Madrid, Paris-Detroit open jaw last year and got a good deal $660 by purchasing it through Northwest Airlines' World Vacations division. The catch is you have to buy at least 2 nights hotel OR 4 Best Western Advance units OR rent a car to qualify for the package airfare. But you'll have to get a hotel room anyway right?
We ended up purchasing the airfare and some Best Western advance units (since we were planning on staying at the BW Carlos V in Madrid anyway). All of the other arrangements were ours. (including the cheap EasyJet flight from Barcelona to Paris.)

Just to add to what others have said, I also tried it out on Travelocity to see what happened. I don't know where you are flying from, so I used JFK as home base:

Dates: March 20 depart, March 30 return

JFK to BCN, then Paris to JKF: $596

JFK to Paris and back: $511

JFK to BCN and back: $586.

So, the open jaw is about the same price as to Barcelona, and less than $100 more than to Paris and back. To me, that is about the same price, considering you won't have to backtrack.

Good luck!
Karen

I need help. I am trying to find an open jaw ticket on travelocity and the tickets I find are significantly higher than RT tickets. I need a flight from JFK to AMS on May 7 and BRU to JFK on May 14. The price I get is over $800! Help.

What is the price of a straight roundtrip ticket? It might be that there's no great fare available for that time.