Open-Jaw tickets

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What's the deal with open-jaw tickets? Are you buying round-trip tickets but are able to fly out from anywhere else. Are you limited to the same airline? How much more expensive can the be (average)? We are trying to save time by not having to double-back by buying open-jaws but are trying to figure out exactly how they work and prices. And where you would go to actually buy one of these tix.

[me]

yes, the best way to get a feel for prices is to find a good travel agent and ask them.

mostly, if you want to buy such tix out of Dallas, AA or BA are the ones to go trough. with none of these can you take non-stop flight both ways without an extra premium. <with AA, and always with BA, one typically flys to Gatwick, and from Gatwick on a BA flight to the destination. at the end, this is reversed: a BA flight from your last city to Gatwick, and an AA or BA flight back to Dallas. i have no idea how it works from other cities. in 2004, since i wanted to fly home non-stop from Zürich, i flew Dallas to Zürich and another airline (Swiss?) from Zürich to Lisbon>

the one time i bought an open-jaw, ie paid cash for it, was with all Delta flights. it was Dallas to Atlanta, with connection to Zürich. return was Amsterdam to Atlanta, Atlanta to DFW. <the AMS-Atlanta flight was delayed about 6 hours, so Delta comped me with a free domestic ticket. Delta has now closed the Dallas hub, so this would be less aluring.>

if the first travel agent doesn't offer you a good deal, look elsewhere. i'd look 2 or 3 other places, anyway.

[WillTravel]

I booked open-jaw tickets this summer on the Continental site. In my case, it was cheaper than most roundtrip fares. You could have separate airlines in several cases: 1) you buy the tickets from a consolidator (e.g. Orbitz has some consolidator fares, and so do other companies) or 2) the separate airlines are codeshare partners, or 3) you find a deal which has very good one-way tickets on two separate airlines. #3 is pretty rare for the US to Europe, but is somewhat possible for Canadians going to Europe, and also for travel within the US.

First start by getting an idea of what airfares should be. Search lots of sites.

Note that sometimes if you get an exceptional, fluke price, you might not have any open-jaw options at all. If the price is good enough, obviously it's worth considering.

Also, in my case, there's no doubt that the easiest way for me to get to Europe is one single flight, late at night to London. Then a day or two later, i take a budget flight somewhere. This year and last year I'm taking much more lengthy routings through Continental because of the price (and also they go directly where I want to go). Basically, you have to consider the full picture.

I use this site a lot:
www.itasoftware.com

I also use Orbitz Deal Detector, Travelocity Flexible Search, Travelocity Fare Watcher, and I am signed up for numerous airline and other travel newsletters that announce deals. I guess you could say I'm quite dedicated to low airfares .

[commie]

i have this artice about open-jaw tickets and cheap airfare on my website in case you need to know more about this topic.
spent about 3 hours to find some pics i could use for this topic

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willtravel said:

I use this site a lot:
www.itasoftware.com

I also use Orbitz Deal Detector, Travelocity Flexible Search, Travelocity Fare Watcher, and I am signed up for numerous airline and other travel newsletters that announce deals. I guess you could say I'm quite dedicated to low airfares .

We went on the itasoftware site and found a lot of great prices for multiple carrier flights but it says that you need to book these flights through a travel agent in order to get the same schedule and prices. Is this true or is there a way to do this ourselves? And are travel agents expensive when it comes to do something like this?

[rchua]

i would just check the airline websites for open jaw. i bought mine on aa.com and it was the cheapest compared to other sites. open jaw tickets are lifesavers because you don't have to travel all the way back to your starting point for the return flight.