What it looks like
Milan → Budapest → Athens on two tickets
example output- Two tickets
- $70 per person
- Nonstop through fare
- $60 per person
- Difference
- +$10 per person
- What the $10 buys
- 22 hours in Budapest
- Risk
- Low: a 22-hour gap, but still not protected
Ten dollars for a day in a city is the point, not the saving. This is the shape to look for on your own plan: not every trip has one, and the example plan we publish came back with none, which is what the empty section is for.
When it does not work
- Separate tickets are not protected. If the first flight is late, cancelled or diverted, the second airline owes you nothing and you buy a new ticket.
- Bags are not checked through. You collect them, clear customs, and check in again.
- An airport change inside the hub (Gatwick to Heathrow, Orly to Charles de Gaulle) turns a gap into a commute, and is marked high risk for exactly that reason.
- You must be admitted to the hub country to do this at all, and some airlines want onward proof at check-in.
- Only a handful of candidates are priced live per plan, and phase one leans on cached estimates. A hub with no cached fares may never get a live look.
- Same-day connections are only tried when the first flight lands by 14:00. Otherwise the second ticket is the next day, which is the pattern that gives you the free day anyway.
- Kiwi's guarantee is Kiwi's, not an airline's. It covers rebooking under its own terms; read them before treating it like a normal connection.
Risk
Medium risk
Every combo carries its own low / medium / high badge, computed from the actual gap. Leave a real cushion; a missed second ticket costs more than the combo ever saved.