What is an open jaw ticket?
An open jaw ticket is a return itinerary where you fly into one city and home from another, leaving a gap you cover yourself by train, car or a separate flight. It is priced as a return rather than as two one way tickets, which usually makes it far cheaper than it sounds.
Open jaw ticket explained
The name describes the shape on a map: two legs that do not meet, like an open jaw. Fly New York to Rome, travel overland to Milan, then fly Milan to New York. The airline treats that as one return journey with a surface sector in the middle, not as two separate trips.
The pricing is the part most travelers get wrong. Instinct says two one way business class tickets, and that is frequently double the cost of a return. An open jaw is usually priced close to the higher of the two returns it replaces, which means the flexibility often costs very little and occasionally costs nothing at all.
Europe is where it pays best, because the rail network makes the surface sector easy. Flying into Brussels and home from Paris, or into Milan and home from Rome, adds a train journey of two or three hours and removes a backtrack that would otherwise waste a day. The same logic applies to Japan, to the Nordics and to any region with fast rail.
Two conditions are worth knowing. Most airlines require both legs on the same carrier or alliance for the fare to construct properly, and some fares restrict how far apart the two airports can be. Building an open jaw through a booking site is often awkward, which is why it is one of the more common things to ask an agent to price rather than attempt yourself.
More on open jaw ticket
Rarely. It is normally priced close to the higher of the two returns it replaces rather than as two one way tickets, so the added flexibility often costs very little and sometimes nothing.
Whenever the trip covers more than one city and backtracking would waste a day. It works best in regions with fast rail, so flying into Brussels and home from Paris, or into Milan and home from Rome.
An open jaw has exactly one surface gap in an otherwise return journey. A multi city itinerary can have several flown segments in sequence and is usually priced differently.
Sometimes, using the multi city option, but it constructs awkwardly on most booking sites and the fare rules are easy to break. It is one of the more common things worth asking an agent to price properly.
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