Open jaw flights are excellent for experienced travelers to maximize their trip by allowing more flexibility. There are several advantages to booking itineraries with open jaws instead of a traditional round trip option.

The reason why they’re affectionately named, “open jaw” is because if you draw the flight paths on a map it will usually resemble an alligator’s open jaw. At this point you may be wondering why someone would want to book tickets this way. Wouldn’t it just make sense to buy one way tickets if you need something this fancy? Typically the main driving force behind this type of itinerary is price, but there are other advantages that simply allow more freedom to maximize your travels at each destination. It also prevents paying unnecessary change fees should one leg of the trip get interrupted or cancelled.

“Open jaw” can describe one of three different types of itineraries:

Origin Open Jaw

This is flying from one city to another but return to a different airport. Here’s an example of an open jaw flight I just booked for my in-laws’ upcoming trip around the US: New York City (EWR) to Fort Myers, Florida (RSW) to Boston (BOS).This is described as an origin open jaw.

This itinerary saved them money versus purchasing two one way tickets. Plus, it allowed them to visit three different cities and more flexibility to fly on the same flights with my husband and me.

Destination Open Jaw

Another example is flying from one city to another and returning to the original departure city from a different destination. I booked this destination open jaw for my trip to Europe this summer. I planned to visit four different countries with my girlfriend. Based on a few music festivals, we knew we wanted to meet in Ibiza and end in Brussels. 

It’s very cheap to fly within Europe, but the biggest expense involves actually crossing the pond first. So buying two one way flights across the Atlantic simply isn’t economical. That’s when I used the multi-city search option on ITA Matrix to find the following American Airlines itinerary. It was almost too perfect. I got an open jaw flight to Europe that perfectly fit our schedule AND fly using my elite status with American? That, my friends, is a gift.

So I booked Detroit (DTW) to Ibiza (IBZ) and returning from Brussels (BRU) back to Detroit (DTW). This example isn’t as clean of an open jaw flight path due to the connections, but you get the idea.

Double Open Jaw

Finally, the double open jaw is a bit more advanced to book and usually requires some type of phone call to the airline instead of searching on something like Kayak. However, your results may vary. These involve two totally separate departure and arrival cities. Example: flying from Chicago to Dallas and then continuing from Houston to Miami.

Although I didn’t plan it this way, my Europe itinerary I just detailed actually turned into a double open jaw due to my flight from PHL to DTW getting cancelled. So I asked American Airlines to re-route me to Buffalo, New York (BUF) where my husband was traveling on business (with a car) and we drove the four hours across Canada together to return to Detroit.

Essentially the easiest way to describe an open jaw itinerary is saying that an airline will take you from city A to city B but it’s your responsibility to get yourself to city C. At the end of the day open jaws are usually recommended for more experienced travelers. The point is to save money and maximize the number of destinations you can visit without sacrificing trip time. The best strategy is to first search a combination of round trip and one way itineraries to establish your baseline. Then see if you can improve with multi-city searches or open jaws. Finally, determine if the transportation to get between the different destinations is worth the savings of the open jaw. Hopefully this will help you the next time you need to book a more complicated trip.

I created all of the example maps in this post with the Great Circle Mapper.

The post What is an Open Jaw Flight? appeared first on Seize the Globe.

There is a rather convenient travel app that allows you to hail a ride, taxi, black car, SUV, or luxury vehicle to take you where you need to go. Uber is a service that currently operates within 39 countries in both major and not-so-major cities. These include Bangkok, Cape Town, Auckland, Paris, Melbourne, Taipei, Lima, and more. To be honest, when I read the cities list it shocked me. Seriously–Tulsa, Oklahoma? Okay. You would not have guessed that–stop lying.

Uber ride options

This is the type of technology that your friends probably wish existed after late nights on the town. Basically you open the app, view vehicles near you in real-time, enter your desired destination, your phone’s GPS detects your location, receive a fare quote, and voila! the nearest Uber driver will arrive at your location to fetch you. You do not even have to know your current address. The app does all the legwork for you. It is also a completely cashless process; meaning that your ride gets charged to the credit card on file and you will receive a receipt in your e-mail inbox shortly thereafter. You can even split your fare with another user!

So how do you take advantage of $30 of free Uber rides? Sign up for your account here. This referral link will automatically credit $30 toward your next ride after you create your account. If you do that, I will also receive credit. So thank you! For any readers who are already existing Uber members, please feel free to post your own referral link in the comments section. The more the merrier!

Additionally, Uber launched a new program with American Express that rewards users who enroll their eligible American Express card for use within the Uber app. Users can choose to either receive 2x the points or use points to pay for their ride. That is a pretty easy way to maximize your points earning potential with just one tap of the screen. There are countless travel apps on the market, but Uber stands out for a number of reasons. The GPS tracking does a fantastic job of pin-pointing your location, you can rest assured in the fare that you pay in an unfamiliar city, and best of all no more fumbling with cash in order to tip your driver while cars whiz past you–because there is no tipping with Uber.

Uber – Amex Partnership

Enjoy your free $30 and double points earning!

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The AAdvantage Gold packet that I recently found in my mailbox

First let me tell you a quick story of what happened to me last weekend while I was traveling to a three-day music festival in Las Vegas. Then I will explain the three different elite status levels, how to obtain them, and subsequently their benefits.   So there I am, sitting at the gate, awaiting to board an American Airlines flight headed to Las Vegas. My two friends and I planned this trip 6 months in advance and were feverishly chatting to one another via Facebook about our excitement. Then one friend notified us that her flight had been CANCELLED and rebooked on a new flight that would land well over 24 hours after her anticipated arrival. She already spent over 40 minutes on hold waiting to see if there were any earlier flights and she was beginning to panic. I decided to try my luck at resolving the issue. My flight was scheduled to board in the next 15 minutes, so I had to act quickly. So my friend sent me her record locator number and I dialed the AAdvantage Gold Service Desk. This is how it went:

Agent: Hi, Ms. Keltner. Thank you for calling the AAdvantage Gold Service Desk. How may I help you today? Me: Hi, there. I am currently traveling on an itinerary to Las Vegas, NV this evening and about to board my flight. However, the friend who I am supposed to meet there for our vacation just had her flight cancelled. Her record locator is #XXX1234. Can you please help find her a flight that departs first thing tomorrow morning? I need her to land in Las Vegas as soon as possible. Agent: I can certainly check on this for you. Please hold.

< Brief hold >

Agent: Ms. Keltner, I was able to change Ms. Knapp’s departing flights to the first flight tomorrow at noon. She will be in seat 2A and then 2B for her connecting flight. I apologize for the inconvenience any of this has caused you. Is there anything else I can help you with today? Me: 2A and 2B? Are these really small planes or something? Agent: Her first flight is on a smaller aircraft, but for her flight from DFW to LAS she will be in First Class.

This all happened in under 8 minutes. Needless to say, that agent saved the weekend and no one in our party was going to miss any of the music festival! Not only that, it was resolved quickly and efficiently and she was even upgraded to First Class without me requesting it. Mind you, I did not even pay for her flight. It was a completely separate itinerary, but they still honored my request as a Gold member. Pretty sweet! Once again, proving that it never hurts to ask!   Now for the information regarding the American Airlines AAdvantage elite status levels. There are three different levels that members of the AAdvantage frequent flier program can qualify for: Gold, Platinum, and Executive Platinum. You have one full year from January 1st to December 31st to qualify for an elite status that lasts you the entire following year. Then the membership period lasts from March until February of the following year. Therefore, the earlier you qualify, the longer you have those benefits without having to re-qualify because you begin receiving elite benefits immediately after qualifying. For example, if you qualified for AAdvantage Gold in May 2014, then you would reap the benefits of that elite status until February 2016. The easiest way to initially describe this is through visuals. I pulled these from my own AAdvantage account to show as examples.

AA Gold Qualification Requirements

AA Platinum Qualification Requirements

AA Executive Platinum Qualification Requirements

Courtesy of AA.com: AA Qualifying Points Chart

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