Open jaws are an important concept in the miles world. They
are a break in your trip, essentially meaning that you stop in one place and
start again from another. Here’s an example:
If I start in Washington and
go to Toronto, the open jaw would be from Toronto to Montreal, because I am not
actually flying between those cities, but rather just coming back to Washington
from Montreal instead of Toronto.
Why is this important? There
are a few reasons:
- If you want to do any one-way traveling in your destination area, an
open jaw will allow you to do so. If I want to fly to London but take the
train to Paris, I can use an open jaw to fly home from Paris instead of
having to go back to London first.
- If the airline you’re on doesn’t allow stopovers, an open jaw would
allow you to see two cities and just purchase a ticket between the two
outside of your miles ticket.
- If you want to fly home to a different city than where you started,
an open jaw allows you to do this on one ticket.
There are many uses for open
jaws, and the nice thing is that many airlines let you do them. I’ve outlined each airlines’ open jaw rules
for miles tickets below:
American Airlines, British Airways, United Airlines
Since all three of these
airlines allow one-way bookings with your miles, they inherently allow open
jaws because you can simply book two separate one-way tickets.
Delta Airlines
Delta doesn’t allow one-way
bookings, but you can do an open jaw and get a roundtrip price for your ticket.
This means doing A-B,C-A, or A-B-C. All allowed. You can also do A-B, C-D (two
open jaws) for the price of a roundtrip, as if you were booking two separate
one-ways.
US Airways
As has been noted by many
other blogs, US Airways is consistently a mess when it comes to award ticket
rules. It seems that as long as you’re convincing about what you want to do,
and it’s within even the vaguest reason, you can get an agent to book a ticket.
Technically though, US Airways allows one open jaw on an itinerary (though not
an open jaw and a stopover). Their
rule is that the open jaw cannot be larger than the distance of the outbound or
return leg.
Want to know more or need help booking travel? WenneTravel can help you for free at www.wennecorp.com.
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