Frequent flyers: Is there a "best way" any more to fly into one airport and fly out of another?

Some airlines will give you a lower fare if the whole trip is on that airline. A better way to save on a trip like this is to check fares a day or two before and after your planned trip. If you can be flexible, it will help you get the most affordable fare.

I booked a trip last labor day, San Francisco to NY on Monday (the holiday), drive to Boston on Thursday, Boston to SFO on Saturday. A week before we left, my son decided to fly Boston to Washington DC on the Saturday, then fly Dulles to SFO the next Tuesday. Even after change fees, we got a small refund because the flight to DC plus the day change for Dulles to SFO was much less than the original Boston to SFO flight.

I booked a round trip to Miami on Expedia for January. Picked a flight time for going down and one for returning which was cheaper. The total was quite reasonable. Then I called United to get miles and also possibly change the return to a later flight. They didn’t show a flight at my return time and also quoted a much higher price for the round trip. When I looked again, I had booked the outbound flight on United and the return flight on American. It saved me about $200 so I stuck with it. I would look at a site like Expedia or Kayak or Orbitz to compare flight prices. You can do a search for a multi-destination trip and select each leg. Once you have booked, contact the airlines (or their web sites) to book a wheelchair.

There are computer programs, web sites, and travel agents who are expert with them, who can find deals that involve taking several inexpensive one-way flights, and compare between routes using different airports.

The Rome2Rio web site is one such, but even the major air travel web sites will find some too.

The following advice is for domestic travel.

If you are booking one direction, it’s usually best to stay with the same airline for all legs of the flight getting there.

In terms of doing your triangle, it used to be doing a round trip or open jaw (you are doing an open jaw, where you return from a different airport than you landed in, picture it like an alligator mouth open) was much much cheaper than buying separate one way tickets. Now, many of the airlines don’t sting you on the price for booking one way, and you can search for the cheapest tickets on various airlines for each one way ticket.

If you are going to fly a major national airline like American or Delta, then it’s worth it to check if the open jaw has a great price. Other airlines usually there is no benefit. If you take an airline like southwest that’s all based on one way, even if you book it as a round trip, you choose each one way flight and just pay for it at once.

Extra tidbit: Southwest has no extra fee for up to two checked bags and no oenality for cancelling or changing a flight. I don’t know if they have coast to coast flights.

Don’t forget to figure the price of the baggage in your calculations.

I fly non-stop period. Switching planes is inviting missing a connecting flight. A trip such as yours I would go visit a travel agent and let them show you your options. They can sometimes get you upgrades too. Play up the bum foot as it may enable you to board earlier than general boarding. I would also opt for an airline that has assigned seating as cattle call boarding is less than fun and can assure you an isle seat thinking that would be best to accommodate your foot issue instead of climbing over people in your row.