Open-Jaw Flights — Fly Into One City, Home From Another

🎯 Key Takeaways

What is an open-jaw flight?

A standard round-trip flies you from A to B and back to A. An open-jaw flight breaks that symmetry: you fly from A to B, travel overland from B to C, and then fly home from C.

Example: Fly London to Lisbon, take the train to Porto (2 hours, ~€20), fly Porto back to London. Your ticket covers two flights — London Gatwick→Lisbon and OPO→London Heathrow — as a single open-jaw itinerary. The journey between the two cities is the "jaw" — the open gap you arrange yourself.

How open-jaw pricing works

Airlines price open-jaw fares as the sum of two half-returns. If the return leg from your second city is cheaper than from your first, the open-jaw total can beat a standard round-trip.

Where it typically saves money:

• Flying home from a smaller or less-served airport (often cheaper than the major hub)
• Touring a region linearly — coastlines, rail corridors — with no backtracking
• Returning from the city most convenient for you, not the one you landed in

Where it does not save money:

• Peak demand routes where both legs price at full rate
• When the overland connection costs more than the flight saving
• When you are basing yourself in one city and want a straight return

Deal stacking with FairFares

The most effective way to use open-jaw logic is deal stacking: combining two FairFares price alerts into one cheap trip.

If FairFares alerts you to London → Lisbon at £39 and Porto → London at £44, you can assemble an open-jaw trip for £83 total — likely cheaper than any round-trip to either city. The two deals may never appear as a single combined search result. By stacking them, you capture two sale fares simultaneously.

How to do it:

1. Set FairFares alerts on both legs of your intended route
2. When both alerts fire in a compatible travel window, book each leg
3. Arrange the overland connection yourself (train, bus, or cheap internal flight)

How to book

Most booking platforms support open-jaw under the multi-city option — look for it next to the round-trip/one-way selector.

1. Enter your outbound leg (e.g. London → Lisbon, 10 June)
2. Enter the return as a second leg (e.g. Porto → London, 17 June)
3. The platform prices it as a single combined itinerary

On airline websites, multi-city pricing is sometimes lower than two separate one-ways because the airline applies half-return pricing. Always compare both.