There is something oddly satisfying about watching a trip move across a map in one direction.
You land in one city, travel through the places you actually came to see, and eventually leave from somewhere else. There is no final-day scramble back to the airport where the holiday started, no spending half a day retracing a route you’ve already covered, and no paying for transport simply because your return flight happens to leave from the wrong end of the country.
This is the basic idea behind an open-jaw or two-airport itinerary. Instead of booking a conventional return flight between the same two cities, you fly into one airport and return home from another. It is particularly useful for road trips, multi-city holidays and longer journeys where you already know you’ll be moving in one direction.
Skyscanner’s multi-city search can help compare these combinations before you start booking individual parts of the journey.
Start With the Route You Actually Want to Travel
A common mistake is choosing flights first and then building the holiday around them.
That can leave you with an itinerary that looks perfectly reasonable on paper but involves a lot of unnecessary backtracking. Imagine a traveler planning two weeks in Italy, beginning in Milan and gradually making their way through Florence, Rome and Naples. A conventional return ticket might bring them back to Milan for the flight home, even though they finished hundreds of kilometres away.
That return journey isn’t really part of the holiday. It’s just something the ticket has forced them to do.
With a two-airport search, you can compare a flight into Milan and a return from Naples. Suddenly, the itinerary follows a natural direction instead of making you reverse course at the end.
The Fare Difference Might Be Smaller Than You Think
Many people assume that flying into one city and out of another must be considerably more expensive.
Sometimes it is, particularly on routes with limited competition. But there are plenty of situations where the difference is surprisingly small, especially when several airlines serve both cities. That’s why it’s worth checking rather than deciding in advance that a normal return ticket will be cheaper.
For example, someone travelling through Japan could compare an arrival in Tokyo with a departure from Osaka. A traveler exploring Spain might look at Madrid and Barcelona. Someone doing a road trip through New Zealand could compare Auckland and Christchurch depending on the direction of the journey.
The point isn’t that these combinations are always cheaper. The point is that the price difference can be small enough that the time saved becomes much more valuable.
Add Up What You Don’t Have to Pay For
The real saving with this strategy isn’t necessarily sitting in the airfare.
Think about what happens when you have to return to your original airport. There could be a train ticket, a domestic flight, fuel for a rental car, another night in a hotel or simply an entire day spent travelling back.
Those costs can make a traditional return ticket less attractive than it initially appears.
A slightly more expensive international fare may actually produce a cheaper trip once you remove the unnecessary return journey. It can also give you another full day at your final destination instead of spending that day getting back to where you started.
Rental Cars Can Make the Difference Even Bigger
This is where the strategy becomes especially interesting for road trips.
Returning a rental car to the same city where you picked it up isn’t always necessary. Depending on the country and rental company, one-way rentals can make it possible to collect a vehicle in one city and leave it in another.
That means the entire journey can move forward and you also don’t have to worry about turning around just because your flight does.
Of course, one-way rental fees need to be checked because they can sometimes be substantial. But when the route is long enough, the convenience can still outweigh the additional charge.
Compare Both Versions Before Booking
The easiest way to use this hack is simply to run two searches.
First, look at the traditional return itinerary. Then compare it with a multi-city search where the arrival and departure airports are different. Look at the airfare, but also consider the ground transport, accommodation and time involved in returning to the starting point.
Skyscanner is useful here because the comparison can be made before you’ve committed to the rest of the trip. You can see whether the more natural route is reasonably priced instead of discovering the problem after all your hotels have been booked.
Sometimes the conventional return ticket will still be the obvious winner.
But when you’re planning a trip that naturally moves from one city to another, forcing yourself to finish where you started can be an unnecessary restriction. A two-airport itinerary can let the holiday finish where the journey actually ends, which is often a much better way to travel.
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