Edinburgh to Bali, booked the way you'd expect, is over $1,200 across multiple airlines. Edinburgh to Oslo, Oslo to Bangkok, Bangkok to Bali — three separate one-way tickets — comes in under $500. And you get Oslo and Bangkok.
That's not a loophole. That's just what happens when you stop asking the search engine to price one long journey and start pricing the pieces.
Ticket types, and which one is the trap
| Type | What it's good for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Return | Fine when you genuinely know your dates. | You usually don't. |
| One-way | The whole method. One ticket number per leg. | Nobody protects your connections. That's on you. |
| Multi-city | Looks like the obvious tool for this. | It's the trap. Stitch legs that don't belong together and the system panics and quotes $12,000. Miss one leg and every later leg cancels. |
| Open jaw | In one city, out of another. Genuinely useful. | Limited to what the airline will pair. |
| Round the World | Fixed year-long plans. | $3,000–$10,000, one direction, must end where you started, miss a leg and the rest dies. |
Round-the-world tickets are built for people whose year is decided in advance. Nomads don't have one of those. I met a friend in Japan once and ended up in Brazil for two months learning Portuguese — you cannot put that on a Star Alliance ticket.
Positioning flights
A positioning flight is a short, cheap hop you book in order to start the real journey somewhere cheaper. It sounds backwards and it works constantly, because long-haul pricing depends enormously on which country you depart from.
Departure taxes, carrier competition and local demand all vary. Some countries load hundreds of dollars onto every ticket leaving them. Flying an hour to a neighbouring country first can cost less than the difference.
The same logic applies at home: check nearby airports before you book your closest one. The airport an hour's drive away is frequently cheaper on the identical route.
Checking alternative airports properly
Most people search the airport they think of as theirs and stop. That single habit is worth hundreds a year, because the cheap long-haul out of your region very often leaves from the other one.
- 1Search the region, not the airport. Both Skyscanner and Google Flights let you enter a city or country rather than a code, and they'll price every airport in it at once. Do that before you ever type your home code.
- 2Add "nearby airports" to the search. It's a checkbox, it's off by default, and it's the whole trick.
- 3Price the getting-there. Train, bus, coach, parking. A £200 saving that costs £60 to reach is still £140 — a £40 saving that needs a taxi at 4am is not.
- 4Check the arrival end too. Two airports serve most big cities, and the second one is usually where the budget carriers land.
The cheaper airport is usually the one with a budget carrier based at it, or the one in a country with lower departure taxes. That's why the saving is often much bigger than the drive — you're not shaving a fare, you're leaving from a different pricing regime.
If the cheaper airport is over a border rather than down a motorway, you've stopped comparing airports and started booking a positioning flight. Same logic, longer hop.
The worked example
New York to Bangkok, priced direct on Expedia: $570.
Route-hacked: New York to Stockholm $202, Stockholm to Geneva $37, Geneva to Hurghada $73, overland to Cairo, Cairo to Colombo $174, Colombo to Bangkok $110. Total: $596.
Twenty-six dollars more, for five extra countries. That's the whole product in one line.
Those were the prices on the day I found them. Prices move — the method doesn't. Run the same searches and you'll get different numbers and the same shape of answer.
The three things that will bite you
1. Delays destroy separate tickets
Your legs have different ticket numbers, so no airline owes you anything if you miss a connection. Leave two to three days minimum in every city. This is not padding, it's the price of admission for booking this way.
2. Proof of onward travel
Most borders want evidence you're leaving. The free fix is a standing habit: always be booked two flights ahead. It solves the problem permanently and costs nothing extra, because you were going to book that flight anyway.
3. Hidden-city ticketing
Flying through a hub is sometimes cheaper than flying to it, so people get off at the connection. If you do it: only ever skip the final segment, and never check a bag. Skipping an earlier leg cancels everything after it. It isn't illegal, airlines dislike it, and it's a thing to do occasionally and quietly rather than as a habit.
Carry-on only, wherever you can manage it. Half of these fares are cabin-bag fares — check a bag and you've eaten the saving. The real benefit is that no luggage plan means no plan at all, which is the entire point of travelling this way.
Every routing, with the numbers.
The book walks the full method end to end, and the video shows me building these routes on screen. One payment, lifetime access.
The short version
- Book one-way segments between destinations. Avoid multi-city tickets.
- Departure country changes the price enormously — position yourself somewhere cheaper.
- Check nearby airports before booking your closest one.
- Separate tickets mean nobody protects your connection. Two to three days buffer, always.
- Stay booked two flights ahead and you'll never fail a proof-of-onward check.