Mixed cabin and open jaw: stretch your EuroBonus points further

Mixed cabin means booking different cabin classes on the outbound and the return — business out, economy home, for example. Open jaw means flying into one city and home from another. Both tricks rest on the same principle: EuroBonus prices awards per direction, so you are completely free to combine.

What is a mixed cabin?

A mixed cabin is an award trip where the outbound and the return are booked in different cabins. You pay the points price for each direction separately, so a business outbound plus an economy return costs exactly the sum of the two one-way prices. There is no penalty for mixing.

That makes mixed cabin perhaps the most underrated trick in EuroBonus:

• Business out, economy home: sleep on the westbound or Asia-bound night flight, and take the daytime return in economy. You get most of the comfort for a fraction of the points.
• Economy out, business home: on routes where the night flight is the return, turn it around.
• Premium as a middle ground: when there are no business seats, premium out and economy home is often a good plan B.

How much does it save? Here is a worked example with round numbers:

Award seats are released per cabin and per direction. A date with no business seats outbound may have plenty in economy, and the other way round. By mixing cabins you open far more date combinations than if you lock the whole trip to one class.

What is an open jaw?

An open jaw is a round trip where you fly into one destination and home from another. You cover the "gap" between the two cities yourself, by train, hire car or a cheap local flight.

Because EuroBonus tickets are priced per direction, an open jaw is nothing more than two one-way tickets. That gives you:

• An itinerary without detours: no flying back to the city you started from just to get home.
• Twice as many dates to choose from: the outbound and the return do not need award seats on the same route at the same time.
• Two chances to find value: if there are no seats home from New York, Boston, Washington or Miami may have them.

Why does combining save points?

Both tricks exploit the fact that award availability is patchy: the seats exist, but rarely exactly where and when you first look. When you can mix cabins and change airport in one of the directions, you multiply the number of valid combinations:

1. More date combinations means you can more often travel when the points price is lowest.
2. You pay for comfort only where it matters — the night flight.
3. You avoid "buying" a whole round trip in business when only half the journey has business seats.

How do you find mixed cabin and open jaw?

Hunting for this by hand in an ordinary booking engine is laborious: you have to check every direction, every cabin and every airport separately. This is exactly what Bonusinsider is built for:

• The map shows round trips where the outbound and return can have different cabins, so you see the mixed-cabin combinations directly.
• The trip finder assembles whole journeys, including feeder flights and open-jaw variants, within your points budget.
• Search shows availability and points price per direction, so you can build the round trip yourself, one direction at a time.

What pitfalls should you know about?

• The points price follows the departure date. After the devaluation of 1 December 2025, business costs more points than before. The price is set by the chart in force when the aircraft departs.
• Taxes and fees vary by direction and airport. Two otherwise identical tickets can carry very different cash amounts. That part comes on top of the points and must be checked with the airline.
• The gap in an open jaw is your responsibility. Allow a generous margin if you have to make the return from a different city.

Used well, mixed cabin and open jaw are the difference between "there are no seats" and a booked trip, for fewer points than a standard round trip in a single cabin.

Frequently asked questions