Originally Posted by
Opaquer
We did think about this. We'd be getting an internal flight (probably on Aegean?) from Rome to CHQ around the 14th of November, so we definitely could make that a return ticket. My only concern is that if something happens at CHQ where the flight is delayed or cancelled and we miss out flight back to Rome for whatever reason, it means we'll miss our flight back home too. From what I've read and seen, if this was all a single ticket the airline would fix it (i.e. For the Lufthansa ticket, if the CHQ to ATH is delayed and we miss the ATH onward flight, they'll organise it to get us back on track themselves) but it seems if we get an internal one ourselves and there's a delay, the airline won't help us out? It would definitely make the flights easier though, but not sure if it's a concern we should have or not?
OP - if purchasing a separate repositioning flight from CHQ to one of the bigger hub cities, can you leave plenty of buffer, e.g. a day so to minimize the risk of unexpected delays? You could adjust your itinerary to do more sightseeing or gift shopping during the last day at the departure city so it's not wasted time.
Side note, I know you didn't ask and my apologies if this is obvious to you - is your family generally well travelled as a group of 5? It's not exactly an easy feat to travel for one month across 4 countries with many train rides and flights involved. Since you appeared to be flying in Y, I would consider optimizing the itinerary and minimizing the number of connections and total trip time for the round trip flight, and just do more repositioning within the EU or AU.