Open-Jaw Flights? Multi-City Trips? How to Book Even Better Trips for Less

Simple roundtrip flights are so last year. It's time to spice up the way you book flights to see and do more.

What's better than a cheap roundtrip flight to London? How about flying into London, hopping down to Paris, then flying home from there – often without paying much (if anything) more for your flights? That's the beauty of booking multi-city flights or open-jaw flights instead.

They're similar tactics, and they're crafty (and underutilized) ways to save both time and money when traveling. And while it takes a bit of extra legwork beyond booking a simple roundtrip fare, it can easily be worth it to pull of a two-for-one (or even three, four, or more) trip.

What is a Multi-City or Open-Jaw Flight?

All open-jaw flights are multi-city flights, but not all multi-city flights are open-jaw flights. Head spinning yet? Let's break it down.

Here's what it looks like: A multi-city flight might just be a set of flights from Chicago-O'Hare (ORD) to London-Heathrow (LHR) to Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) – or even add that final segment back home to Chicago from Paris. You're touching multiple cities – got it?

Open-jaw itineraries are similar … but the key word is open. Rather than connecting you from London to Paris, you leave that blank and make your own way between the two cities – say, by train.

You can take things even further by, say, departing from and flying back to different airports. Or adding even more segments to your multi-flight journey.

As far as most flight search engines (including our go-to, Google Flights) are concerned, the two things are the same. You can easily fly in and out of the airports you want to on a single itinerary.

Let's take a look at this example: Flights from New York City (JFK) to the Swiss Alps during ski season. Here's a typical roundtrip fare into Geneva (GVA) for next February.

But what if you wanted to see more of the Alps than just what Geneva? You could take the train through France and Switzerland and soak it all in, but then you'd have to meander your way back to Geneva for your return flight … or do you?

This extremely simple open-jaw itinerary has you flying into Geneva, traveling through Switzerland for a week, and then flying out of Zurich (ZRH) to head home. It's the perfect, clean example, as it involves just one airline that offers nonstop flights from both destinations. 

The best part? You can sometimes even save money booking this way. These particular flights are actually cheaper than a simple roundtrip flight to Geneva and back. Rather than paying for a return trip to Geneva via bus, train, or rental car and wasting time getting there, you can spend your final night of the trip exploring Zurich knowing your flight home leaves from there instead of Geneva. 

And the price difference is typically massive compared to booking these exact same flights separately as two one-ways – especially on long-haul international flights like these. In this case, the same itinerary would add up to over $2,000!

Why Book Multi-City or Open-Jaws?

There are many situations in which booking multi-city or open-jaw itineraries makes sense for travelers.

If you're flying to Aruba (AUA) and back, for example, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to book open-jaw. There's only really one airport on the island – it would (likely) be a huge pain to transit by boat to another one. But destinations throughout Europe and Asia are ripe for using this booking method, because other transportation options in those regions are easy to use and there are so many places to see – including flights on different budget airlines.

Here's why you should consider it.

Save Money (or Points & Miles)

Open-jaw itineraries can help you fly using points and miles more easily.

Award availability to redeem your points and miles won't always line up perfectly with your ideal travel plans, so you might have to utilize multiple airports to get it done. But in places like Europe, where nearly every city is linked by convenient train and bus transportation, you can avoid booking roundtrip train fares and easily fly out of another country instead.

Let's say you're eyeing this incredible American Airlines business class flight deal to London. And why wouldn't you?!

But maybe you can't find award space to book the same flight home (or just don't want to pay the high taxes and fees to fly home from the United Kingdom). That's a blessing in disguise! You can use some of our other flight deals to find another great way home instead.

By making your way over to Spain for a few days, for example, you can take advantage of this amazing Iberia business class award deal to fly home.

That's an extra city and another sweet, sweet business class flight! That's the beauty of open-jaw flights.

Save Time

Let's say you're planning another trip to Europe and have two or more cities on your mind. You know you want to see Paris, but a weekend in Amsterdam is on your list, too. Just do both.

You can save yourself some time by booking an open-jaw itinerary. Instead of wasting a half day getting from Amsterdam back to Paris to fly home, just fly home from Amsterdam.

This practice doesn't just work overseas, either – you can book these flights domestically as well. They're especially helpful for road trips. Want to take a week exploring the Pacific Coast Highway? Fly into Portland (PDX) and out of Los Angeles (LAX) on the same itinerary using Delta. You can do this for tons of different city pairs to help you save time and money.

Instead of reconnecting back up to Portland to get a roundtrip fare home to Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP), you can book it and keep your flights all on the same itinerary. Clean and easy.

Save on Flights to One City

Even if you're just visiting one city, using open-jaw or multi-city flights can save you money. Several cities have multiple airports: Why not fly out of the cheapest one?

Let's say you're heading to Paris. What if a flight into Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) is cheapest, but flying out of Paris-Orly (ORY) is cheaper for the way home? Use an open-jaw flight to make that happen! Your itinerary would look like this, for example: JFK – CDG, ORY – JFK. It won't always be a money-saver, but this strategy is worth considering.

Thrifty Tip: Just type in the city name and Google Flights will default to displaying all its airports, like both Tokyo-Haneda (HND) and Tokyo-Narita (NRT) for “Tokyo.”

You can search for cheap fares into multiple airports on Google Flights. Google Flights allows you to input up to seven departure and seven destination cities, all at once!

Let's say you're searching for cheap flights to Napa Valley, California. Instead of only searching for flights into Santa Rosa (STS), expand your search to include flights to San Francisco (SFO), Sacramento (SMF), Oakland (OAK), and San Jose (SJC) – all near the Bay Area with a fairly quick drive up to Napa.

Build in a Free Stopover

If you haven't used a stopover to see two cities for the price of one, you're in for a treat. Several airlines offer the ability to build in a free (or cheap) stopover for up to seven days. Check out all the airlines with stopover programs.

For example, if you're flying Icelandair, you can add a stopover in Iceland on your way to your final destination in Europe – or on your way home.

And thanks to some funky scheduling quirks in Icelandair's schedule, the stopover fare can sometimes actually be cheaper than the regular roundtrip fare.

Icelandair offers one of the easiest-to-use stopover programs, but they're not alone.

• When flying ANA, you can stopover for up to seven days in Tokyo for just another $100 more than the price of a simple roundtrip flight. Why not see Tokyo while you're in Asia?
• If you're flying TAP Air Portugal, you can stop over in Lisbon or Porto for up to five days for free.
• Or stopover in Doha, Qatar for free when flying Qatar Airways.
• Flying Aer Lingus? Spend up to a week in Dublin for free!

Some airlines' stopovers are easier booked directly through their website. 

Read our full guide on booking stopover flights!

Positioning Flights

Maybe my most frequent use of this tactic is for booking positioning flights ahead of a big international trip.

Positioning flights are connections you book separate from your main overseas flights that get you to the airport that has the best deal – often saving hundreds in the process. Recently, I booked positioning flights in order to take a big trip with Qatar Airways.

Miami (MIA) and Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) are both Qatar Airways gateways in the U.S. So if you booked Qatar award tickets that fly out of Miami and back into Dallas, you'll need to find a way to and from both airports from your home base in, say, Nashville (BNA).

You can easily stitch together an itinerary that connects you with your Qatar flights with no headaches. And because all the flights are on American, the cost of those flights stays low.

How to Book It

Booking is easy: Start with Google Flights but select “Multi-city” instead of “Round trip.”

From here, two sets of boxes will show up. You can fill in your cities here if you're booking an open-jaw itinerary (city A to B for flight one, and city C to city A for flight two).

Otherwise, select “Add Flight” to create a longer itinerary:

You can add as many legs as you want by selecting “Add Flight.” Then, start searching to see your options!

If you're looking to book a free stopover on a certain airline, filter to only see results on that airline.

And keep in mind: Selecting the cheapest itinerary may take trial and error. Try out different dates for each leg of your itinerary to see if prices drop on certain days. Or, try searching first for cheap date ranges of roundtrip flights. Then hunt around to find the cheapest itinerary in multi-city searches.

Bottom Line

By booking a multi-city flight or an open-jaw flight itinerary, travelers can give themselves the freedom to see more on their trips … often for the same price or just slightly more.

It's a flight-booking technique that more travelers should take advantage of.