Fly to Europe on Multiple Airlines?

Not only the possibility of missing a connection, on some of these hops, you need to collect your luggage before you can move onto the next airline. That will certainly extend your transfer time. For example, you will have to retrieve your luggage from Jet Blue, a domestic carrier, and then get over to the international building to check-in with Virgin Atlantic. I'd be curious to know if Virgin Atlantic has luggage transfer arrangements with British Airways.

It is certainly OK for the Jet Blue hop (watch out for the $7 blanket/pillow kit) and then transfer over to the international building. At that point, I would stay with one international carrier to Paris. We did that on United. We flew from Sacramento to LAX on United, got our luggage and walked over to the international building to check in with Lufthansa. At that point, it was Lufthansa to Frankfurt and then Florence. No change of airlines to get to Florence.

You would be out of luck if you were connecting with a European budget airline, but if you miss a connection with a national carrier like VA or BA they will put you on a later flight-but if you miss the last flight of the day you may be delayed 24 hours. Something else to consider, if you plan on checking your your luggage, JB doesn't transfer luggage to other airlines, and VA and BA won't handle each others luggage; meaning it will take you time to recollect your bags, check-in and go through the security process again. Yet another consideration, how much do you value your time? While these three connections may save you money, taking a non-stop flight to Europe will save you time and aggravation; even if you have to pay a bit more.

I think it totally depends on the timing whether I would want to try it or not. I did something similar last year when I flew to Spain. I flew Virgin Atlantic from Chicago to London, then Ryanair from London to Spain. Coming back I flew Easyjet to London from Spain, then Virgin Atlantic back to Chicago. In my case, I had to switch airports, too, so I left several hours in between flights. (I had a choice between two flights leaving London Stansted but chose the later one just to be a on the safe side. Turned out I could have caught the earlier one, but that might not have happened that way if I counted on it.)

My Chicago-London flight was a roundtrip that I got on a special deal when they started their Chicago route. Then I checked the budget carriers to see what worked best getting to Spain and back.

Assuming you will be spending a few days in Paris, your cheapest way to fly Paris-Rome is on a budget airline. Fly Paris CDG-Rome Fiumicino on either Vueling or Air Berlin. Fly Paris Orly-Rome Ciampino on easyJet. With budget airlines the sooner you book the cheaper the fare. Pay close attention to luggage weight limits and check-in deadlines. If you miss the deadline, your ticket will be worthless and you'll have to buy a new one at a very high price for a later flight.

Thank you so much for the feedback.

We are not planning on checking baggage at all.. But those are great things to remember in case we have to.

Seems to me that your flying time is being artifically extended to save $200. Personally, I prefer shorter travel time - but maybe my pain tolerance is a bit above $200. Only you can tell if your time is worth $200.

Sounds like a lot of work and stress to save only $200.

I agree.

Have you really looked at all your options? With all the various online ticket sites, I bet you could book the same combination (or a better one) all on a single ticket. You can (and often will) get a string of flights on multiple airlines, but the flights are all booked by a single vendor, and it's considered a single booking....so if one part of it gets hosed (e.g. a flight is late and you miss your connections due to no fault of your own), they should get you on another flight. Doing it that way may limit the airlines that you can use (they all have various interlocking alliances), but would offer you a lot more security.

If it were me, I'd keep looking until I found something that didn't involve as many risks.

Be Careful
One of my friends did this to fly to Dubai, her and her sister bought tickets to London, then London to Dubai on seperate airlines.

There was a snowstorm in Canada which delayed there flight out to London. When they got to London they had missed their flight and the company refused to put them on another flight, becuase what happend on a different airline didn't matter, so they were forced to buy new tickets.

Since the other airlines won't know about your arriving flights, the key here (if you decide to do it) is to allow a generous amount of time between flights. For only $200 of savings, there's a lot of risk if you cut it too close.

Last year, my brother and his wife flew from Seattle to Chicago to Munich on United and then later added Munich to Paris on Air France. Due to multiple reasons, including backed up toilets on their Chicago to Munich flight which grounded the plane, they missed their Paris flight by about 10 minutes. Because they weren't on the same ticket, they ended up having to pay about $700 on-the-spot to get a new flight to Paris, where they had already paid for their hotel for the night. IMO, it's not worth it.

I wouldn't use multiple airlines to save just $200. But, if you use a scheme like this, one way to make it work for you is to stop-over in a chosen connecting city for a day or two. That way making connections in time isn't so difficult. I stopped in Amsterdam for a few days one year when I had a flight Rome-Amsterdam-San Francisco. The extra charge for this arrangement was $100. For example: from San Francisco lots of flights go nonstop to LHR (London); Connecting flights from London's airports go to many other countries. I like to stay at least a night in London before traveling on; this would be especially important if I had to leave from a different airport for the next leg of my flight.

Flying nowadays is so different and difficult that I would not risk your plan. Too many planes are delayed for too many unexpected reasons. Experienced travelers do not count on announced arrival times any longer.

Forget about saving $200 and relax; you will enjoy your trip much more and a month after arriving home you won't miss the money at all.

I am flying that same exact route in two weeks. We looked into flying on multiple airlines and did find that we'd be saving about $150 bucks each, but the peace of mind we have from just buying our tickets all together from one place was definitely worth it. I didn't want to risk having to buy an extra $900 plane ticket if we missed one of our connections to a different carrier. Good luck!

I agree that the peace of mind is worth the extra $200.......it may be that I have lost my spirit of adventure..............

GOOD LUCK....let us know how this works out upon returning!!