Kabir Sethi
Senior Travel Designer · 2026-05-27
Flights are usually the largest single line in a long-haul journey, and the way they are shopped makes an enormous difference. A few structural tools, in the order we usually reach for them.
Open-jaw itineraries
Fly into one city and out of another. Into Naples, out of Milan. Into Hanoi, out of Saigon. Into Cape Town, out of Johannesburg. This is almost always the same price as a return, sometimes less, and it saves you an entire day of backtracking. Very few travellers ask for it.
Stopovers as a free extra destination
Several carriers permit a stopover of up to a few days on the way. A Gulf carrier to Europe can include two nights in Doha or Dubai at little or no fare difference. Two destinations, one ticket.
Positioning flights
Occasionally a premium fare originating in a nearby country is dramatically lower than the same routing from India. Adding a short positioning flight can reduce a business-class long-haul substantially. It adds complexity, so we only recommend it when the saving is genuinely material and the connection has a safe buffer.
Award seat sourcing
If you hold miles across programmes, premium award availability is worth checking before any cash fare. Availability opens at fixed intervals — usually 355 to 361 days before departure — and premium cabin awards on popular routes disappear within hours. We monitor release windows for clients who ask.
What we will not do
We will not build a routing with a 55-minute international connection to save money, and we will not put you on a fourteen-hour itinerary with two stops when a non-stop exists for twelve per cent more. Cheap flights that cost you a day of your holiday are not cheap.
The practical ask
Tell us your dates are flexible by two or three days if they are, and tell us if you hold miles anywhere. Those two pieces of information are worth more than any discount code.
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