Cheap Air Travel

September 12, 2009 6:11 PM

How do I get to London, England on the cheap?

I live in Boston and I want to visit England in January. I already have a place to stay, I'm just curious about flight prices. I've searched kayak.com, travelocity, expedia, orbitz, and cheapflights.com and the cheapest flights seem to be in the $700ish area. While this price point isn't a deal breaker, I'm curious to know if there are any flight secrets out there that I'm not aware of to get that price point down closer to $500 (or even less). So hive-mind, do you have any suggestions, tips, or tricks? Thanks for the help!

posted by sepsis to travel & transportation (8 comments total)

My students often find good deals flying to Dublin and then taking EasyJet or RyanAir to London (or another city in Europe). I can't guarantee the prices would be good when you want to fly, but this is often a popular route amongst the students I work with.
posted by snugglebunny at 6:19 PM on September 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

I was looking at the Air Canada website earlier today and flights each way between Toronto and Heathrow were 219 CAD (about 200 USD) in January. Taxes, airport fees and so forth would probably increase that to around 300 USD.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:35 PM on September 12

I've taken to booking through the airlines directly recently (worried about cancelled flights - airlines treat you better if you buy directly), and getting prices similar to what I did on Priceline - but yes, BA.com is showing about $700 USD for both the Boston-London run, and the New York-London run (which is the cheapest usually). I suspect that taxes would be higher than richocet estimates out of Toronto and into the UK.

Have you also tried Priceline? They've been pretty good for me. If you are a student, STA travel is also good, and quotes with taxes included.

ooh - Priceline is showing an Icelandair flight for $535 -- that goes through Reykjavik, but hey, you might be able to visit Iceland while you are there! (Some students were saying that Icelandair was offering free stopovers for a few days in Iceland, just to get people to spend tourist money there. They are medieval lit people, so they both go to and from Britain a lot, but also obviously want to see Iceland - great medieval literature. We were teaching a Vikings course together).
posted by jb at 7:06 PM on September 12

Re: Icelandair... I did exactly what jb describes when I went to Amsterdam a few years ago. We took a three day layover on our departing flight and saw half the country. It's great, but at the time Iceland was very, very expensive. Not sure what the situation is now that the economy has collapsed. In any case, it's not a bad way to go even without an overnight layover. You get to break up a long transatlantic flight, which can be nice. I have no complaints about the airline. The staff at the Keflavik International airport use razor scooter to get around. It's cool.

My other advice is to wait until closer to the date. I went to London in March, and was able to get tickets for ~$275 roundtrip, because we booked only six weeks in advance. My office mate when a week after I did, and paid ~$550 because she booked much earlier.
posted by kimdog at 7:42 PM on September 12

I once got a pretty cheap flight to london on air india from jfk. not sure if it's still that cheap, but that might be an option.
posted by genmonster at 8:07 PM on September 12

STA works for anyone under 26 too! i got a one way ticket to from CHI to LON for $237 from STA. if you are under 26, i'd get on their mailing list and wait for a sale.
posted by nanhey at 8:20 PM on September 12

I found skyscanner useful.
posted by lhude sing cuccu at 5:00 PM on September 13

Re: Iceland

Not sure exactly what the Kronur is trading at now, but I was there in April and found things to be very reasonable as the economic situation had caused the Kronur to drop quite a bit against the dollar. In any case if you have a chance to stop over in Reykjavik I'd take it. Iceland is an awesome county.
posted by dyslexictraveler at 7:58 AM on September 14