Travel Tips

Travel Tip: Multi-City Travel

If you’re planning to stop in multiple cities before you return home, how can you book it effectively?

There are a few options out there.

Online, your best bet is the multi-city option. That lets you book more complicated itineraries, and it generally costs less than purchasing separate round-trip tickets.

But with more complex schedules, or if you’re using award miles, things get a little trickier.

Say you want to fly into one city, and then return home from a different city.  That could constitute two one-way tickets. Or it could qualify for an “open-jaw” fare.

To qualify, the “open”part of the journey, where you’re not flying, has to be a shorter distance than the shortest flight leg.

So, for example, you could fly from LAX to LaGuardia, and Boston back to LAX and get an open-jaw ticket because the distance between New York and Boston is shorter than the flight distance.

Confused yet? Don’t forget to ask your airline about stopover flights.

In many cases, you can use your rewards to fly from point A to point B, but spend a couple of days in another city along the way … at no extra charge.

Find more ways to book the right ticket in our Airlines & Airports section.

And check out the rest of our Daily Travel Tips here.