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Many airlines permit two types of airfares that can save you money and time if you book them using the tips I’ll give you here.
These airfares are “open jaw” tickets and “circle” tickets, also called open jaw and circle trips.
Never heard of them? Well, read on to learn what they are and how to use them.
Circle fares and open jaw fares become useful when you want to visit more than one city, but want to avoid expensive one-way tickets.
An open jaw trip is simply a three-city itinerary where the second and usually shortest segment is traveled on land (or by air if a separate ticket is cheaper than the circle trip ticket described below).
For example, a traveler from Los Angeles. could:
This takes less money than buying a roundtrip ticket from Los Angeles to Calgary and an expensive one-way ticket back from Vancouver to Calgary. It also takes less time than driving back to Calgary—and gives more time to enjoy Canada’s beautiful national parks.
The open jaw fare “averages out” two roundtrip fares.
Let’s pursue the same example—our traveler wants to book a flight from Los Angeles to Calgary and then another flight from Vancouver to Los Angeles.
If the roundtrip fare from Los Angeles to Calgary costs $500, and the roundtrip fare from Los Angeles to Vancouver costs $400, our traveler would pay approximately $450 for her open jaw ticket. In other words, the open jaw ticket gives you the price of half of two roundtrip tickets.
(We’ll discuss how you set up an open jaw ticket later in this post.)
All images this page (c) Fotolia
Usually, open jaw tickets are permitted either solely within one country or from one country to one other country. For example, you could
An exception to the “one other country” rule treats Europe as one country.
You can fly into Berlin and out of Copenhagen, into Rome and out of Amsterdam, or many other combinations.
The least expensive open jaw tickets are usually available only when these 3 conditions are met:
Knowing these rules can help you set up your itinerary in the least expensive way.
Circle fare tickets can also save you time and money. A circle trip is a multi-destination itinerary that involves flying between three cities, rather than traveling to any of them on land.
For example, you might fly out of Philadelphia to San Diego, then fly from San Diego to Seattle, and finally fly back to Philadelphia from Seattle.
To get the cheapest circle trip fare, your trip must follow the same conditions outlined for the open jaw ticket:
1) All flights must use the same airline or its partners,
2) The second flight of the three needs to be the shortest (with some exceptions), and
3) The fares must be conform to the airline’s rules (see Open Jaw above for details).
You may be wondering by now if these two types of trips can be combined. Yes, they can.
For example, you could fly from Boston to Phoenix, drive from Phoenix to Las Vegas, fly from Las Vegas to San Jose, and then fly back to Boston from San Jose.
If an airline like Southwest offers cheap one-way tickets on several of your intended routes, you can book even more creative and complex itineraries at low fares. Cheap one-way fares on airlines like Southwest are becoming an increasingly popular alternative to using open jaw or circle trip tickets in Europe, the UK, and USA.
Most online discount airfare sites offer an easy way to set up a circle and/or open jaw ticket. On most sites such as Travelocity, you’ll choose the multi-destination or multi-city option. Some sites may use different phasing.
TIP: Look up each roundtrip fare individual roundtrip fare separately--as check for the fare calculation above.
SO, bite into the open jaw fares or orbit with the circle fares—even combine the two—and SAVE TIME AND MONEY!
Thank you for your comment and for visiting the blog!
Drop off charges at times can be very high, but also at other times can be extraordinarily low. Why the latter? Rental car companies may need more vehicles at the other destination.
For example, last October, I drove an Avis (a good company) compact car from San Diego to Tucson for $6 per day, with no drop off charge. In addition to stopping along the way, I used the vehicle for a week in Tucson.
How could this be? Well, Avis seemed to be preparing for its peak winter season in Tucson. Better that I drive cheaply than to pay one of its employees to move the vehicle to Tucson.
When thinking of one-way charges, you also have to compare them to the time wasted and cost of taking your vehicle back to the car pickup location. In the post, I am advocating open jaws when people want to sightsee between airports.
For instance, a very popular trip is to drive between Los Angeles and San Franciso via Santa Barbara, Big Sur, Carmel, etc. and possibly even Yosemite National Park.
In this type of situation, do you really want to drive back to LA in order drop off the vehicle with no one-way charge, when you can fly out of San Francisco?
Again, thank you.
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If driving from arrival airport to another return airport, the drop charges of a car rental usually makes this a costly move. How to beat these high charges. The open jaw plan sounds great except for the car drop charges Thank you