by Anne Garber Most travellers know that roundtrip flights almost always offer savings over the sum cost of two one-ways on the same route. And most roundtrips go from Point A to Point B and back again. What if you need to do some traveling at your destination, and it's more convenient to fly home from a different airport? Enter the open-jaw itinerary.
Or how about if you need to hit two or more cities in a short span of time, and want to do it in a single trip? Try a circle itinerary.
Defining the Terms: Stopovers vs. Connections First, a quick jargon review. In all cases with open jaw and circle itineraries, we are talking about stopovers, and not connections. The term connection is used when you arrive at an airport, and depart from the same airport on the next available flight, or within four hours of arriving. A stopover is when you don't leave on the next flight, or spend more than four hours in that city. A connection usually doesn't cost you anything extra, a stopover does.
Note that if there is no connecting flight available, you may stay in the city for more than four hours without the corresponding stopover cost.
The point here is that you need to do business or visit folks at each city on your itinerary, and want to stay several hours or even days to do so.
The Open Jaw An open-jaw flight is one that, in the simplest terms, flies from Point A to Point B, then from Point C home to Point A. Points B and C are often neighbouring airports, or at least in the same general area. A sample open-jaw itinerary might be Chicago - Seattle on the way out; Vancouver, BC - Chicago on the way back.
Another open-jaw scenario: you fly into and out of the same destination city, but your starting and finishing points are different, thus: Fly Point A to Point B; then fly Point B to Point C.
Despite the fact that an open-jaw itinerary isn't quite a classic roundtrip, most airlines treat it as such, and set the fare like this: you pay one-half the roundtrip fare of each leg of the trip - one-half the roundtrip fare of the first leg, and one-half the roundtrip fare of the second leg. The resulting total fare will typically offer considerable savings over the cost of two, separate one-way flights.
So if the Chicago-Seattle roundtrip would cost $600, and the Vancouver - Chicago roundtrip would cost $500, you end up paying $300 for the first leg, and $250 for the second leg, for a total of $550 roundtrip.
The Circle A circle itinerary typically begins and ends in the same city, but includes at least three separate flights that take you to two or more different cities, without the over land portions of the open jaw.
Example: fly from Seattle to Chicago, then Chicago to New York, then New York to Seattle. (Feel free to add a Point D, E, F and beyond, but make sure you start and end at your original city, Seattle, in this example.)
Circle itineraries usually permit a maximum of two stopovers, and are typically priced as a series of one-way flights. (Circle fares may not save you as much as an open jaw.) Still, circle fares qualify you for discounted fares, and you will often find that the fares on the separate legs of your flight add up to less than the pure roundtrip fare. This is especially true on popular long-haul routes.
For example, the circle fare for a direct New York-Seattle flight might cost more than the sum total of New York - Detroit - Seattle - St. Louis - New York, with stopovers in each city.
Exceptions and Rules:
Open Jaw:
The primary restriction on an open-jaw itinerary is that the segment of your trip that you don't fly (the Seattle-Vancouver leg in our example) must be shorter than the shortest leg of the trip that you do fly.
So, for example, if you flew from Chicago to Seattle, then drove cross-country to New York, then flew back to Chicago, you couldn't qualify for the open-jaw discount, as the distance from Seattle - New York is much greater than the distance from New York- Chicago.
Circle Fares:
Restrictions and rules on circle itineraries vary by airline, but usually take one of the two following forms, both a variation on the old "Saturday night stay" rules:
1) You may not begin travel from the furthest geographical point of your trip until the first Sunday of your trip. Note that it is the furthest geographical point, not the place you stay the longest or schedule in the middle of your trip.
2) You may not begin the last leg of your trip until the first Sunday after the beginning of your trip.
The difference between the two is critical: in the first instance, the order in which you visit the cities is extremely important. In the latter instance, it is much less so.
Booking Engines As it turns out, most online booking engines can recognize a circle or open-jaw itinerary, and price them accordingly. It might still be worth checking with your travel agent or the airlines just to be sure. Be sure to ask them if minor adjustments of your flight dates might help you qualify for either an open jaw or circle itinerary on available airlines, and save you some money.
Travel Savvy: OpenJaw and Circle Fares - To learn more about this author, visit Anne Garber's Website.
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Anne Garber
(Visit Anne's Website)
Anne Garber's media career spans 42 years
in both print and electronic media, as
author, publisher, photographer,
columnist, broadcaster and the mother of
two -- and evalu8.org's Managing Director.
She has written 14 best-selling books and
-- with editor John T.D. Keyes (who is
also her husband) -- writes food, business
and travel features worldwide; she
contributes online to travellady.com and
chocolate-atlas.com. The couple writes a
travel column for the Culver City News and
co-authored Victoria's Best Bargains,
Exploring Ethnic Vancouver and Cheap Eats
Vancouver.
Ms. Garber has worked as both publishers'
and authors' agent, and is known as the
'go-to' person in the book, magazine and
newspaper publishing industries for legal
opinion on North American trademark and
copyright issues. A practicum in San Diego
as Environmental Practice Group paralegal
was followed by a return to the Pacific
Northwest, where she is currently
considered a leading expert on internet
copyright infringement actions and online
fraud investigations. Anne Garber divides
her time between Vancouver, BC, Seattle,
WA, Toronto, ON and Paris, France.
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