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Most people book flights as though there are only two shapes: one-way or return. There is a third shape hiding in plain sight on every booking site — the multi-city ticket — and its cleverest form, the open-jaw, routinely saves money and eliminates an entire day of unnecessary travel. Once you see how it works, the return ticket starts looking like an inefficient default rather than the obvious choice.
What an open-jaw ticket is
An open-jaw ticket is a return flight where the outbound and inbound cities are different. You fly into one city and out of another. The “jaw” is the surface segment you cover yourself — by train, bus, or road — between your last destination and your departure point.
The classic example: fly into Rome, travel overland through Italy, fly home from Venice. Instead of returning to Rome to catch your homeward flight — a day lost and often a separate ticket purchased — you simply depart from where you already are.
What a multi-city ticket is
A multi-city ticket strings together two or more one-way segments booked as a single itinerary. You fly A to B, then B to C, then C back to A (or anywhere else). The airline treats it as a single booking with multiple legs.
This is different from booking separate one-way tickets, which also works but loses you the protection of a single itinerary — if the first flight is delayed and causes you to miss the second, separate tickets leave you on your own, while a single multi-city ticket obliges the airline to rebook you.
How to book them
Every major booking site has a multi-city tab. On Google Flights it is under “Multi-city”. On most airline sites it is the same. You enter each leg separately and the system prices the combination.
- Compare against separate tickets. Sometimes two one-way fares are cheaper than a multi-city booking; sometimes the combined fare wins. Always check both.
- Mix airlines. A multi-city booking does not have to be on a single carrier. Outbound on one airline, homeward leg on another, is perfectly valid when booked separately — just note you lose the single-itinerary protection between the different carriers.
- Use the same search tools. Google Flights handles multi-city searches well and shows the combined price clearly.
- Check the surface segment cost before committing. A budget open-jaw only makes sense if the train or bus between your two cities is cheap and easy.
The positioning flight variant
A positioning flight is a short flight you take specifically to reach a better departure airport. If a direct flight from a nearby hub airport is significantly cheaper than the flight from your home airport, it can be worth flying to the hub first. This is a more advanced version of the same logic: treating flights as building blocks rather than a fixed itinerary.
The classic example: a traveler in a smaller European city flies to London or Amsterdam first because the long-haul options from those hubs are significantly cheaper, and the positioning flight costs less than the saving. The maths need to work and include both time and cost; when they do, it is legitimate.
The one limitation
Open-jaw and multi-city tickets require you to know your route in advance. They work when your itinerary is fixed enough to know entry and exit points. They do not work for genuinely open-ended travel where you want to see how it feels and decide as you go. For that, separate one-way tickets booked as needed are the right tool.
When open-jaw saves real money
| Route type | Open-jaw saving | How |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-country road trip | High | Fly in one end, fly home from the other — no backtrack |
| Island-hopping | High | Different entry/exit islands without retracing |
| Single-country loop | Medium | Depends on domestic transport cost between cities |
| Single-city visit | None | Return ticket is the right shape here |
Compare the whole map at once
Everything above is a method, not a fare. When you actually go looking, search broadly first — whole months, flexible dates, nearby airports — before you narrow to a route. Aviasales compares the airlines and agencies together, which is the search we start with.
Search flights →The search tool that handles this
Google Flights handles multi-city search well. The fare-alert system works for each leg independently once you know your routing.
Everything from this article — plus seven more travel systems
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