Rick Steves Explains How Flying 'Open-Jaws' Can Save You A Ton Of Money On Airfare

Rick Steves is a well-known tour organizer with decades of experience jet setting around Europe, in particular. He's known for doling out advice on how to maximize your vacation experiences. In many instances, that means looking for money saving options that help balance a vacation budget for greater buying power where and when it matters most.

Airfare is a key area of focus here. Looking for discounted flight pricing is a common thread in every list of vacation planning tasks. That might come from selecting midweek travel dates or opting to fly with a budget airline for one or more of your necessary departures. In fact, budget airlines can be a major factor in European travel. However, one of Rick Steves' most important tips for saving money when flying is through the use of open-jaw tickets, "that's into one city and out of another," he clarifies on his blog. Flying into and out of the same city to begin and end your trip can actually introduce greater hassle and cost, especially when exploring interconnected international destinations like western Europe or East Asia. There's just no need to constrain your adventure in this way when planning a sprawling trip. The same can be said for an extended exploration of the United States, with flights utilizing different, nearby major cities like Tampa and Orlando, Los Angeles and San Diego, or Chicago and Milwaukee).

The most obvious benefit of booking open-jaw travel is the open ended ability to start and end your trip in a variety of locations. For a vacation starting in Paris, for instance, a return flight that takes advantage of one of the many major hub airports in nearby European cities just over France's borders—such as Frankfurt, Amsterdam, or even London—can expand the sites you get to explore. Travel that's free flowing and exploratory like this can be even more enjoyable, bringing your adventure into contact with so many more people, places, and opportunities for excitement. Moreover, transiting between cities on a train rather than by plane can make the journey even more fulfilling, though Steves warns against pricey seat upgrades.

Steves highlights that open-jaw travel can "save time and money by avoiding a needless costly return to your starting point." If a lengthy journey within your destination is part of the plan, booking a return from a city that's closer to your ending point can alleviate a major headache and even give you the freedom to travel farther on your voyage — a single direction rather than an out and back adventure. Prices can sometimes even come out lower overall when reserving return flights from other airline hubs, too, making this approach a dual-purpose money saving option.

One piece of good news that travelers will be grateful to hear is that open-jaw flight reservations are a completely acceptable way to travel. Skiplagging has become a much-talked about alternative to the traditional flight booking experience in which you book a ticket with a stopover in your target destination and simply fail to board the next leg of your flight. Skiplagging is a practice defended by flight enthusiasts who suggest that the purchase of a seat allows you to choose what to do with your reservation — including a decision not to use it at all. While this trick can help save you lots of money on expensive tickets, it can come with a significant catch. Skiplagging isn't always easy for airlines to catch, but when/if they do uncover your plans, the penalties can be severe. Airlines can — and sometimes do — ban travelers from using the airline for a period of time afterward. Meaning, however you might envision the practice, airlines have outlined this approach as something that breaches their terms of service.

Open-jaw tickets, on the other hand, won't run afoul of any rules, regulations, or laws. You can confidently book two single-direction flights from different cities without any hassle or subterfuge necessary. This means saving money while staying within the bounds of legality and the confines of the agreement you enter into with an airline when booking a ticket.