KLM Flying Dutchman - Reasonably Priced Openjaws are Gone

A few years ago, I made great use of the multicity feature on the klm website to book openjaws. The German site seemd to be great for this, and I often began a journey to the UK in Switzerland, with the return back to Germany (e.g. GVA-AMS-EDI then EDI-AMS-NUE). Sometimes the prices were even better than ordinary round trips.

Now, it would seem this is no longer possible. I want to do a FRA-AMS-ABZ followed by ABZ-AMS-DUS, and it prices out at silly prices, whereas a straight round trip can be as low as EUR149. I have tried other combinations, such as flying into ABZ and out of EDI, and it does not yield anything reasonable.

I am doing anything wrong, or are the days of playing with openjaws for reasonable fares over? Some of the ordinary round trips are a great deal, especially for obtaining segments cheaply. But flying out of FRA and back into FRA is going to leave me with a bit of a train trip at either end.. which arguably takes away the financial advantage an ordinary round trip offers.

It depends on the city pairs. Open jaws still exist for reasonable prices, but perhaps they are not available for the city pairs you are trying. A great tool for this might be ITA Matrix, where you can select a range of departure and arrival airports, it will find the lowest priced open-jaw for you.

They are indeed still possible, i'm currently on a AMS-OSL//TRD-AMS trip for a reasonable price. If it suits your schedule you might want to look at beginning and ending in the same country, maybe that works?

I want to do a FRA-AMS-ABZ followed by ABZ-AMS-DUS, and it prices out at silly prices, whereas a straight round trip can be as low as EUR149. I have tried other combinations, such as flying into ABZ and out of EDI, and it does not yield anything reasonable.

I am doing anything wrong, or are the days of playing with openjaws for reasonable fares over?

Hmmm. It seems that KLM no longer allows open-jaws on the cheapest European fares from Germany (ie: G, R) but only permits them from E (ESRDE) and above.

Meanwhile, it seems AF will still allow open-jaws on all its European fares from Germany (including X, R, and N). So, using some random future dates on klm.com (http://www.klm.com/travel/de_en/index.htm), I was able to find an RSR4DE fare FRA-ABZ-DUS on AF for €224:

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/4152/affraedidusbook.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/255/affraedidusbook.jpg/)
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I find KVS Tool (http://www.KVSTool.com) extremely useful for investigating this sort of thing.

If it suits your schedule you might want to look at beginning and ending in the same country, maybe that works?
Indeed, the fare rules for the fares mentioned above (I think for both AF and KL) only allow departure open-jaws within the same country (destination open-jaws can be anywhere).

However, in this case FRA (Frankfurt) and DUS (Dusseldorf) are in the same country...

Thanks guys, some good suggestions here. I must say, I am loath to pay EUR224 (or EUR282, which is the price that I have been getting) when I can get an ordinary round trip for as little as EUR146, which includes 4 segments!

I haven't tried an openjaw in the country of destination (i.e. into ABZ, out from EDI), so I will try that now.