cheapest route to cali - fly direct or change ?

borischelski

My first post so please be gentle with me !

I am planning to book a family trip to California for next summer and was originally planing to fly my family direct from London to LA with Virgin.

However someone was telling me its far cheaper to fly with a US airline from London to another US city and take an internal flight from there to LA. He thought he had heard flying American to Conneticcut was a good route.

Having never flown to the west coast before i would appreciate any advice as to the best route and also perhaps if its cheaper to fly to another Cali city ie perhaps San Fran?

many thanks

Sues48

I'm not sure about flying from Heathrow as we are in the north and usually fly from Manchester, we have flown via Chicago and New York on several occasions. You need to make sure that you allow enough time between flights as you need to allow for delays and also you may need to change terminals, we have always found this to be easy enough to do, but if given the option I would fly direct every time, but flying from Manchester our options are limited.
Have a look at Continental, American Airlines etc to see how their prices compare with Virgin.
Another thing to bear in mind is how old your children are, it's no fun having to drag grumpy tired small children accross a busy airport and go through security for a second time when you've a connection to make.

Incapuppy

Price up your options on the likes of Kayak or Opodo and include the 'indirect flight' in your search options.

antenna

I havn't tried but i did read that it is cheaper to fly to europe then on to the usa to avoid uk air taxes and get cheaper fares to usa....just a thought

pickpocketlocket

antenna wrote: »

I havn't tried but i did read that it is cheaper to fly to europe then on to the usa to avoid uk air taxes and get cheaper fares to usa....just a thought

You can avoid APD this way, but you will need to leave sufficient time in case of delays. The main flight would be cancelled if you miss it, you would not be accommodated if not on a through ticket.

bagand96

There's no hard and fast rules, but "generally" indirect flights can be cheaper. That said there's a few airlines flying London-LAX so with the competition you may get a decent direct fare. There's more choices than just Virgin.

I'd use a comparison site, kayak.co.uk is very good, and gives you loads of options.

victor2

As already said, seriously consider the inconvenience of changing versus direct flights and the problems if the first flight was delayed.
A quick search on Expedia for flights from Heathrow to LA next June shows Air New Zealand as the cheapest - and it's direct. You can invariably find cheaper deals than Expedia but it's interesting for comparison purposes.

pickpocketlocket

victor2 wrote: »

As already said, seriously consider the inconvenience of changing versus direct flights and the problems if the first flight was delayed.
A quick search on Expedia for flights from Heathrow to LA next June shows Air New Zealand as the cheapest - and it's direct. You can invariably find cheaper deals than Expedia but it's interesting for comparison purposes.

To clarify, if the flights are all on one ticket the traveller will be accommodated if their flight is delayed. There would only be a problem if the flights were not on the same ticket (such as in the ex-EU scenario).

pompeyrich

I checked for someone else on here a couple of weeks ago and the difference wasn't that great. For a random date next june it was £30 difference between non-stop and 1 stopover, the stopover suggested made the journey time 5 hours longer.

having said that we have flown to Tampa via NYC before and it was about £300p.p. cheaper than Virgin or BA wanted straight to Orlando, although we had left it late booking that trip.

best to do as Incapuppy said and check on the sites mentioned, just make sure you check the total journey time inc stopovers.

Voyager2002

There are no direct flights from the UK to Cali.

The most obvious route would be to fly into Bogota (you could take the non-stop flight from London on Avianca) and then take a domestic flight. Alternatively, if you are brave and are willing to face the high rate of violent crime in the USA, you could get to Miami from where American Airlines flies directly into Cali.

Whichever route you choose, you will have a great time in Cali: the Salsa capital of the world!

victor2

Voyager2002 wrote: »

There are no direct flights from the UK to Cali.

There are to California though...

borischelski wrote: »

I am planning to book a family trip to California for next summer......