How to explore more and pay less using a simple Google Flights tool
“Open jaw” or multi-city flight searches can give you the opportunity to explore more and backtrack less.
Do you know about the Google Flights “open jaw” or multi-city flight search? This type of search gives you the ability to search the price of flights into one city and out of another. While these types of flights aren’t always less expensive, the search often does produce cost savings when you plan to fly into a secondary or smaller city first and then out of a larger hub.
Last summer, our family took advantage of an amazing IcelandAir multi-city flight itinerary that got our family of 5 great tickets flying into Bergen, Norway and out of Copenhagen, Denmark for the same price as a roundtrip ticket to Copenhagen alone. That meant we didn’t have to waste any of our precious vacation days trying to get back to Copenhagen and could, instead, make a relatively linear trip from Bergen to Oslo to Copenhagen- with a few other places sprinkled in between.
These less expensive “open jaw” flight options nearly always require a layover of some sort on at least one leg of the trip. They also tend to be most common on airlines that have one main European hub, such as IcelandAir, PLAY and TAP (airlines on which we suggest you consider paying for space and baggage upgrades, so make sure you take those extra costs into consideration), but can also be found on the large code-share partners if you play around with dates and cities.
More exploring, less backtracking. We like the sound of that.