Advantage to flights on same/different airlines, when connecting across different tickets

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Accepted answer

You have another option which will be priced midway between those two, but it will offer you much better security.

This is how I would do it:

  1. Ticket 1: An "open jaw" ticket. You fly Chicago-Dublin; and then you fly from London-Chicago. [This is not two oneway tickets. It is a single open jaw ticket. It will be priced as half way between the cost of a return trip to Dublin and a return trip to London. The reason it is called an "open jaw" is because on the map it looks like your route has an open mouth.]

You can book this by using the "multi city" feature or with any travel agent. The important part is to leave the Dublin-London part out.

This will ensure that you get some of the advantage of the cheap fare to Dublin, but you are protected against delays or complications on your return from London.

  1. Tickets 2,3...: Fly from Dublin to Edinburgh, and from Edinburgh to London, as necessary at the cheapest price. If one flight is late or something, it will ruin your day but not the whole holiday.

To return to the question you asked: if you do want to book it as a return to Dublin+local flights, I would allow a bit more time in Dublin in case of delays.

Dublin is a small, easy airport and even in the worst case, collecting bags and re-checking the bags, doing the terminal change, passing through US Customs&Immigration, you would be airside again within an hour or so. However, if your inbound flight is delayed or cancelled, you are utterly unprotected in the event you miss your second flight, and you may end up having to buy a same day one-way flight Chicago. That will be a lot of money for four people. (Probably 4000 USD total).

BA can forward luggage onto EI (Aer Lingus), AA and US, and should so if you present the EI/AA/US PNR information to the BA desk. It is within BA policy to do this, because EI is a BA partner and AA and US are fellow oneworld alliance members. BA will not forward luggage onto any other airline at Dublin. That said, it probably won't save you much time, because the layout of Dublin airport means you will go past the bag reclaim, through customs, and change terminals anyway.

If flying across two tickets EI->EI, I do not know what their policy is.

Finally, there is nothing illegal or improper about what you are trying to do. Playing these kind of games is quite common amongst regular commuters. It is actually quite unlikely anyone will notice, (although to be fair BA once had a man waiting at the jetbridge to escort me through security on a very tight connection between two tickets when my first plane was late!).

However, on the flip side, you take on the risk of any problems or misconnections that happen. In some cases, like what happened to me, they will do their best to help you; especially if you are sticking to the same airline. But they have no obligation to help you.

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If you'd prefer a short answer: if you fly on only 1 airline, you are much more likely to have a good outcome if there is a delay of the 1st flight, or some other issue. If it's a popular connection, they may hold the 2nd flight. If you miss a connection and it's their fault, almost all airlines will get you on the next available flight, and pay for your meal(s) and hotel room, if appropriate, while you're waiting, all at no charge to you. If there are 2 airlines involved, none of these considerations are likely, and you may have to pay a huge fare for a last-minute flight to replace the missed one.

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