Multi-city ticketing is not the kind of airline ticketing I typically search. The main reason is the only way to really check multi-city pricing is picking and choosing the exact dates. I search round trip and one way ticket prices daily for many places around the world. Most of my travel is arbitrary to coincide with travel dates offering good airfare deals. Combining low airfare deals with low cost hotel rates during good value hotel loyalty promotions and hotels available with loyalty points keeps the necessities of travel within an affordable budget for the trip.
My wife’s desires locked me into an itinerary of needing to travel from Frankfurt, Germany to Amsterdam, Netherlands to Krakow, Poland.
Airline Ticketing Search Strategy for Frankfurt – Amsterdam – Krakow flight itinerary
Step 1: Check one way ticket prices for Frankfurt-Amsterdam.
Flight date: Monday Oct 7 in afternoon/evening (preferred) or Tuesday Oct 8 mid-morning.
$129Â October 7: Frankfurt-Amsterdam one-way KLM 2:15-3:35pm .
Looks good, but was hoping for a ticket price around $75 or less.
Step 2: Check one way ticket prices for Amsterdam-Krakow.
Flight dates: Saturday Oct 12 anytime.
$205Â Sat October 12: Amsterdam-Krakow one-way KLM 4:40-6:35pm.
Step 3: Find a lower cost alternative to spending $334 for two KLM one way tickets outlined in Steps 1 and 2.
$334 to fly FRA-AMS-KRK is far more than I wanted to spend. My next strategy is check round trip price for FRA-AMS with a one way ticket FRA-KRK.
$189Â Mon Oct 7 – Sat Oct 12: Lufthansa Frankfurt – Amsterdam
However the times do not work for a good travel schedule with the late flight out of Amsterdam requiring a late flight to Krakow with 11:30pm arrival in Poland on a Saturday night.
Frankfurt – Krakow tickets are low cost on some days of the week, but Ryanair does not fly FRA-KRK on Saturdays.
- Ryanair Wed Oct 9 $32 FRA-KRK
- Ryanair Thu Oct 10 $40 FRA-KRK
Lufthansa has lowest priced one way flights on different dates.
- Lufthansa Fri Oct 11 $85 FRA-KRK
- Lufthansa Sun Oct 13 $85 FRA-KRK
$140 one way Sat Oct 12: Frankfurt-Krakow 10:00-11:30pmÂ
Frankfurt to Amsterdam round trip at $189 and Frankfurt to Krakow one-way for $140 still adds up to $329 for two tickets to travel from FRA-AMS-FRA-KRK. Far more than I want to spend.
Step 4: One way Ryanair ticket from low cost carrier airport in Eindhoven, Netherlands EIN.
Another alternative itinerary solution is Frankfurt to Amsterdam one way for $129, then pick up a Ryanair flight in the Netherlands from Eindhoven EIN airport near the Belgium border. I flew from Eindhoven once before with Ryanair to Sofia, Bulgaria a couple years ago.
$65 Ryanair Eindhoven, Netherlands EIN – Krakow, Poland KRK Sat Oct 12
Back to step 1 and Frankfurt-Amsterdam one way for $129 + $25 bus ticket Amsterdam Centraal to Eindhoven Airport and 90 minutes + $65 Ryanair EIN-Krakow = $219 total.
That strategy cuts the transportation cost 33% from about $330 to $220.
Step 5: Multi-city ticketing Frankfurt – Amsterdam – Krakow
You might intuitively have thought to search Frankfurt-Amsterdam-Krakow as a multi-city itinerary on Google Flights. I did not.
The reason for not thinking about a multi-city search is I generally find no deals with multi-city searches. As I said in the beginning, I rarely check multi-city itineraries due to having a need for fixed dates to pull up ticket prices, but I have rarely found a multi-city deal. The entire process is tedious and requires adjusting one variable at a time to compare airline ticket prices with different dates and flights.
Low and behold, multi-city ticketing was the simple solution to my multi-city trip challenge.
$130.93 / 119.05 EURÂ KLM multi-city ticket
Frankfurt-Amsterdam Mon Oct 7
Amsterdam-Krakow Sat Oct 12
Reminder to self:
Be sure to check multi-city ticket prices when purchasing a couple of one-way tickets between airports. This multi-city KLM ticket dropped the price to $131 all-in for Frankfurt-Amsterdam-Krakow compared to $334 buying two one-way tickets FRA-AMS and AMS-KRK.
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