Guide to Airglitch Saving Strategies

This guide provides an overview of the booking strategies that set Airglitch apart. While our algorithm takes care of finding them for you and each flight offer comes with clear booking instructions, understanding them can help you make more informed choices when booking your flights.

Spare return

A spare return is a roundtrip bought for one direction because the pair is priced below the one-way. It is a type of throwaway ticketing strategy. Say you plan on traveling from New York to Los Angeles.

Instead of booking the one-way, you book a roundtrip with a cheap return date, saving $100. You may decide to use the return or not, the fare is lower regardless.

More on spare return ticketing. See detailed examples for London to New York, Tokyo to New York and Toronto to Hong Kong.

Spare multicity

A spare multicity is similar to a spare return, but with a multicity itinerary. Instead of a return journey to your departure city, the spare journey flies to a third destination (origin open-jaw):

Or it can return from a different place (destination open-jaw):

Note that this strategy differs from a hidden-city ticket. While still part of the same ticket, the spare flight in this case is a separate journey leaving at a later date. This approach allows you to check a bag, avoids the risks associated with itinerary changes, and isn’t typically frowned upon by airlines.

More on spare multicity ticketing. See detailed examples for Paris to Tokyo, New York to Seoul and Sydney to Tokyo.

Hidden city

This strategy consists of booking a flight with a layover at your desired destination and leaving the airport at the layover.

Unlike the spare multicity, the spare segment of the ticket is not part of a separate journey, which introduces several limitations. Checked luggage cannot be accommodated, as it will be sent to the final destination. Additionally, booking a return flight on the same ticket is not possible because missing a segment causes the airline to cancel the remaining portions. Finally, there is a risk of the flight being rerouted, making it impossible to exit at the layover. This practice is somewhat controversial and airlines discourage it. There have been instances of gate agents questioning travelers with a layover in their city of residence, though reports of passengers being penalized remain anecdotal.

Consider alternative strategies unless the hidden-city ticket offers significant savings and avoid using it too frequently.

More on hidden city ticketing. See detailed examples for Toronto to Hong Kong, Vancouver to Hong Kong and Seattle to Seoul.

Hidden return

This is a variation on the hidden city that allows you to drop a segment while still flying an entire roundtrip. Say you want a New York to Los Angeles roundtrip:

Instead, you can book a multicity that stops back at the origin:

In this example, you are booking a first journey from New York to LA, followed by a second from LA to Boston. Because the second journey has a stop in New York, you can emulate a roundtrip that would have cost $200 more.

This strategy carries the same risks and limitations as the classic hidden city, since you are skipping segments on your final journey.

More on hidden return. See detailed examples for San Francisco to Tokyo, New York to Rome and New York to Rio de Janeiro.

Hidden spare return

This essentially combines hidden city and spare return together: sometimes a roundtrip with an outbound stopping at your desired destination prices below the equivalent one-way ticket.

This approach carries the same risks and limitations as a normal hidden city.

Separate tickets

Separate tickets involve booking two or more one-way tickets for less than the equivalent return or multicity trip.

The savings often come from booking with different airlines for which a single ticket is not available. But it can also happen with flights that can be booked together. Airlines sometimes apply the same, higher fare class across all segments, leading to this discrepancy.

More on separate tickets.

Back-to-back

Back-to-back ticketing is a common way of saving on two identical roundtrips. Instead of booking the trips sequentially, you book one departing from the destination city:

Nested ticketing

Nested ticketing is a generalization of the back-to-back strategy. If you're flying to another place on your second trip, you can achieve that by booking open-jaw tickets.

You can also nest longer travel plans, for instance with open-jaw tickets serving three different roundtrips:

Partitioning

Partitioning is a generalization of the separate tickets strategy. Instead of strictly breaking down your itinerary into one-way tickets, you try various combinations of n-leg tickets to find the cheapest option.

For example, the itinerary from the nested ticketing example could be recreated by combining a multicity ticket, a roundtrip, and a one-way ticket — saving an additional $200 in this case.

You'll notice some overlap between strategies. In essence, each approach involves one or more of the following: dropping journeys, skipping segments, nesting itineraries, or splitting tickets. Airglitch finds these options for you, so you don't have to try them all manually.

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