Airline flights: Round trip vs. Multi-destination

Price difference may not be much especially if you calculate the fare for the TGV and I'd want at least one night in Paris before the departing flight. BUT you'll have to look at your airline of choice and see what you can find.

I just did a dummy booking of multicity - SFO-CDG-NCE-SFO as well as a RT in/out of CDG. The fares were pretty similar depending on where you transited thru on the NCE SFO segment. The fares on Delta were showing as $1300-ish to $1400+ ish, lol.

When I purchase Multi city trips, I always price out round trip to both of my destinations. I do this to get an idea of what days to travel. I've never seen multi city materially different than round trip. What can cause a difference is if one of the cities is more expensive than the other. If you know what airline you'd like to fly, play around on their website.

We have flown open jaw for years. Just flew into Paris and out of Berlin this spring and have done into Rome and out of Amsterdam, into Paris and out of Madrid. Into Vienna and out of Paris (after trips to Prague and St. Petersburg). It generally is about the average of the two round trips. The difficulty is finding a carrier that serves both cities and so it can be trickier to book. But the saving of time and the money on the interim flight or train makes it well worth it.

To state a fundamental, multi-city air fares are not two separate tickets. The journey must be booked as a complete itinerary. Many agencies and airlines offer this sort of search function. Leaving aside the cost, they can offer a significant saving of time.

Multi-city is the way to go, whenever possible. My experience has been like those above -- minor if any cost difference, and the time saving is usually worth it. In your case, the TGV from Nice to Gare de Lyon takes nearly six hours, then you have to get to CDG. Realistically that means an overnight in Paris or CDG before your flight home. A NCE-CDG flight would take less than two hours, putting you airside for your homebound flight. That speed and convenience, including having that day in Nice instead of in transit, ought to be worth something.

Hi from Wisconsin,
I don't know how old you are. In the good olde days an open jaw flight plan was like giving away the key to your bank's lock box. Expensive. Not any more. So feel free to do segments. At least as long ago as 2008 open jaw pricing wasn't a problem.

The only downside of not using one airline for these segments, is connecting flights. An initial Delta flight that is delayed will sometimes cause your connecting Delta flight to be held for you. I am not enough of a flier to know if United would hold a plane for a bit if it is a Delta flight is delayed that contains a Delta ticketed person.

Maybe someone on this link can answer that situation.

wayne iNWI

Wayne, if the tickets for the same day of flying are with two different airlines (not codeshare partners), they’re treated as two completely separate tickets. So if a Delta flight arrives late, United will treat it the same as if you arrived late from your home & missed your flight.

This is the reason I stayed overnight near Amsterdam when flying home recently. I had an Easy Jet flight from Dubrovnik to Amsterdam & a Delta flight from Amsterdam to Seattle. I purposely separated those flights by one day.

Wayne -- we flew open jaw in the old days -- we have been doing it for over 30 years and it was not more expensive than a round trip then either. It has consistently been the average of the two round trips. The key was neveer bookng one way tickets to do this -- always booking multi city or open jaw.

You have to do thr work to know. Go to Google flights and start experimenting with scenarios and see what you get.

I have flown to Odesa a few times, laid in the sun a few days, moved on to Budapest. Then home and it was cheaper than RT to Budapest. You never know till you run the exercise.