Guide to Airglitch Booking Strategies

This guide provides an in-depth overview at 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.

Frequent flyer forums have long circulated three ways to get a cheaper fare for the same journey: throwaway ticketing, hidden-city, and separate tickets. Each of the three turns out to be the simplest member of a family, and Airglitch searches the whole family every time: spare tickets (spare return, spare multicity), hidden-city (classic, on outbound, on inbound), and ticket combinations (separate tickets, back-to-back, nested ticketing, partitioning).

Spare return

A spare return is a roundtrip bought for one direction because the pair is priced below the one-way. This is the strategy usually known as throwaway ticketing. 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.

Spare multicity

A spare multicity is throwaway ticketing extended to multicity bookings. Instead of a return journey to your departure city, the spare journey flies to a third destination (origin open-jaw):

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

Because the spare journey can target any date and destination, the range of options to scan is virtually endless. 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.

Hidden-city

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

Contrary to 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.

Hidden-city on outbound

On a roundtrip or multicity ticket, the exit can also happen at a layover on the outbound journey. Everything after the exit — including the return — is spare.

This combines hidden-city with a spare return: sometimes a roundtrip with a connection prices below any one-way to your destination. It carries the same risks and limitations as the classic hidden-city.

Hidden-city on inbound

The version almost nobody uses runs the exit on the inbound. Because the skipped segments come at the very end of the ticket, every other journey is flown normally — which opens hidden-city to roundtrip itineraries, something that was not previously possible. Say you want a New York to Los Angeles roundtrip:

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-city on inbound.

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 enforce the higher fare class available on all parts of the journey, 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:

This approach often helps you save by bypassing pricing rules that restrict access to certain lower fare classes. Short trips under seven days or those without a Saterday night typically come with higher fares.

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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