Open Jaw Flights... help!

Yes!! That is what I was doing! Thank you so much for correcting me! Hopefully this will change the price a little:) What are some reasonable cities to fly out of? I'm so new at this, so I need all the help I can get!

Layla, I've also been researching flights lately, and the prices have been a bit "steep" for all flights. It appears that fuel prices have started to increase in the last few weeks for a variety of reasons, so I doubt these will be improving in the near future either for return or open-jaw flights. Some of the charter airlines (ie: Air Transat) seem to have lower prices but the frequency of flights has been more challenging to fit with my desired travel dates and cities. Good luck!

When you're searching airfares the sites give you the choice of round-trip, one-way, or multi-city (or something similar). Choose multi-city for open-jaw fares. It's not the same as comparing two separate one-way fares, which it sounds like you're doing.

Given your Central Valley location try Sacramento, Oakland and SFO. Use Kayak to sign up for fare alerts.

Here is one more tip I use when the outbound seems reasonable but the return seems overpriced: Price the trip as a simple roundtrip for the first city you want to visit, and see if the higher priced flight is the return to the US. You know that some days are less expensive than others, but it's based on demand- so a lot of people already booked on a Sunday, for example, might make the day before less expensive. Then price the city you want to return from as a RT and see if the flights are less. Note on both RTs if one flight is less than another and the flight numbers, etc. I've been playing for the last 2 weeks with mileage tickets on Delta for an openjaw and was not getting good results.Seems like their computer was vastly overcharging miles, to the point I was considering the ferry between Amsterdam and London.\ to keep the mileage down. By running the simple roundtrips thru the DL site I found that, on DL anyway, the 8 am departure thru Detroit or Minneapolis St Paul was fewer miles than the 1pm thru Atlanta, same day. I priced it as if it were a real fare instead of miles and it was less, as well.
Continental confounds me sometimes with a reasonable price outbound but a wicked return: that's when I clear the cookies and start over, playing with the option" my dates are flexible". Good luck!

As I have posted many times, almost all of our trips are open jaw. And we always find that open jaw are the same or nearly the same price as RT tickets and sometimes cheaper.

Thank you for all of your input! Keep it coming!!!
So far for an open jaw flight I'm finding the lowest is $1,400. Is this a reasonable price for this time of year, or should I try waiting for it to come down??

I don't see your dates so it's hard to say if your fares are "reasonable" for the "time of year" Summer is higher... And this year it's running well over $1,000 depending on dates/connections etc..

Yes, I just realized that I didn't put the month we are looking to travel... We are thinking some time in the month of July. We are very flexible with our dates. We will be flying out of SanFrancisco or Los Angeles... and staying in Europe 2-3 weeks.

Layla, Based on what I've been finding lately, $1400 seems reasonable. I haven't been able to find anything under $1700 for the flights I've been considering.

How about being flexible with your month. In some ways, July is the worst month to travel - it is peak so there will be no deals for airline tickets. and it is HOT in Italy and surrounding areas.

Hi Layla,, I think 1400 dollars for an open jaw flight is reasonable for July from the west coast . I am paying about the same( we are flying economy out and economy plus home) for same time, into Amsterdam and out of Paris.

flying from the west coast you can sometimes find a better deal using Rome and Milan as your options also note that London Olympics can be affecting prices to and from London for your summer dates
from LAX I usually fly into/out of Milan (LIN) and of course LHR London using British Airways

Layla: If you're wanting to go in July, that's the hottest time of the year in Italy. Late September and October are the best tourist months. By then, Italy is back home after their month long vacation (August.) And temperatures are great. Italian hotels have regulations that minimize air conditioning in the Summer. Flights throughout this Summer are very expensive, and I don't know that you can get around it. You might see what the flights into Ireland are like, and take budget airlines out to your travel cities. I also think you first need to come up with 3 big cities you want to visit, and build an itinerary. You can run all over the continent, but it'll be a big blur if you try to take on too many places too fast. Europe is best done a little slower, and in cities that are somewhat close to each other. With $9 gasoline, it's best to travel between cities on trains. Travel within a city is by mass transit. You can rent a car to do day trips from a central location. You do better picking cities that are easily accessible by train. London, Paris, Amsterdam Munich/Salzburg, Vienna, Prague Venice, Florence, Rome
Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Norway Good luck!

flying open jaw in mid August with a return around sept 10 or 11. prices seem high right now so i am going to sit tight. flying LA to Paris, London to LA. best i saw a couple weeks ago was around 1450. today it's around 1600! yikes.
Layla - suggest waiting it out a bit. i have been tracking the fare for a couple months though and not seen it below 1400. told my friend if we see it go below 1400, we should probably just buy it.

Unfortunately that may be the price. You are flying high season and the forecast this year has been for fares to remain high or not to have the deep discounting of prior years. It is a dice roll. And it is still a little early but it has to be your decision.

Yup, prices look high, but sign up for auto notices on Kayak, etc. and just sit back and wait. Many times the best prices show up two to three months before your dates. If you sign up for Auto Notices you can be monitoring flight prices now. One more thing that we use, to expand our list of possible choices, is to find the lowest price (and decent!) R/T flight out of "our" airport to any airport in the EU. Once you find a flight "over the pond" you can then book flights on one of the many lo-cost inter-EU airlines. Find them on Whichbudget.com.

Layla, we fly from Sacto (once from SF) on American Airlines and they're comparable in price with The Others in my experience. Also, when using their 'Multi-City' button they always charge exactly 1/2 of what a particular single-city R/T itinerary would've cost. YMMV. We also try to avoid flying to/from Italy if possible - expensive, as you're found! The least expensive AA cities are typically Zurich and Frankfurt. Both are well served by fast trains to Everywhere. You might want to consider that strategy...maybe staying in one of those cities the first night to get your 'sea legs' and some needed rest.

Hi, Layla! I'm also in Fresno, CA. Hubby and I are going to Washington DC and then NYC in a few weeks, and I was checking flights, just like you. So, obviously, I'm not going to Europe, but I'm also new at looking up all of this and went through what you're doing. First thing to realize, flights from Fresno are rather limited. You usually have to go somewhere else first to get where you want to go, whether that's Oakland or SFO, or having a layover somewhere on the route. Leaving from Fresno, I first looked at roundtrip prices, then open jaw, and finally one way. I found that, for this particular trip, one way tickets were HALF the priceyes, HALF the priceof open jaw. No idea why. Don't care why. Just booked it and ran. You have to look at all three options unless you are definitely NOT arriving/leaving from the same city, then skip the round trip search. This is my first post on RS' boards. I'm looking forward to reading and learning a lot from all of you here.

Thank you for all the feedback!! It has helped a ton! I've been getting a ton of emails for reduced air fares for the months of March-May... I'm thinking I may try and wait a month to see if there are any good deals for the month of June...