Open Jaw flights
Open-jaw flights are very underrated and are completely legitimate. If you cover a lot of ground when you travel (like I do), this is a great way to travel. An open-jaw flight is when you fly into one city and fly out of another. For example, if you’re visiting London and Paris you would either book a round trip ticket to London or to Paris or have a long layover in one of those cities. At the end of your trip though, this leads you to having to get back to your airport city and this wastes precious travel time! Instead, you can fly into London, then fly (or take the train) to Paris, then fly out of Paris back home. Usually for the same price or cheaper! Even flights within the same country can be beneficial. If you go to Italy, you may visit Rome, Venice, Florence, Naples all in one trip. It’s possible to get a round-trip ticket, but most of the time you’re still wasting time getting back to your departure city in time for your flight.
Tallinn, Estonia
My Experience
I utilized an open jaw flight when I visited Poland, Estonia, and Finland in October 2018. I flew Memphis -> Krakow, then Helsinki -> Memphis. This saved me a ton of time by not having to fly back to Krakow to get home (we did 3 days in Krakow, 1 day in Tallinn, and 2 days in Helsinki). We would’ve had to give up one day in Helsinki to fly back the day before our flight home. Instead, we were able to enjoy a full day in Helsinki and fly home from HEL lol. This also only cost us $30 more on our ticket than a round trip to Krakow.
The best way to use this method
Another way to utilize an open jaw flight to your advantage is to fly from one city and fly back to another. For example, flights from Boston and New York to Europe are always incredible. You can fly Boston to London and back to Memphis for way cheaper than you would fly Memphis to London round trip. You can also do Memphis to London Heathrow and then London Gatwick to Memphis and that may save you some money, too. You can configure an open jaw flight in so many ways to help maximize your time and money!
Merida, Mexico
Downside
One downside to open-jaw flights is when using google flights, you lose the ability to see the prices at a calendar view. However, this is the only downside I’ve seen for open-jaw flights. When you go to book an open-jaw flight, it is also known as a multi-city. So when you go to google flights, where it says “Round Trip” above departure city, click that and select “Multi-city.” If your dates are flexible, I do suggest looking at what round trip tickets cost and find a decent date with cheaper flights to get an idea of what prices to expect. Once you decide on your dates (or if your dates are not flexible), select your departure city, your destination, where you’ll be flying back from, and then where you are flying back to. You can have “Boston -> Dublin, London -> Memphis” if you want. You can also add another flight. So if you want to go to Central Asia but cut through Europe, you can do “Boston -> London, London -> Amman, Amman -> Memphis” for example.
At the end of the day, with limited vacation time, limited funds, or both, any way to save you time and money is worth checking out. If you need help searching open jaw flights, send me an email and I’d be happy to assist :)
Kotor, Montenegro