Information wanted: traveling to London on short notice

[redbird]

I may need to fly to London for a few days, on fairly short notice, quite soon. Obviously, short notice makes it more expensive, but we'd still rather not spend more than necessary.

Just to complicate things, I might be looking for an open-jaw Boston (BOS) to London and back to New York, rather than a straight NY-London round trip.

I think Heathrow or Stansted works at that end; at this end, it can be JFK or Newark (EWR).

If any of you either knows useful things yourself (like where to look online, especially for open-jaw tickets) or knows a travel agent who does this sort of thing, please let me know. I'd normally just book my own ticket for something like New York-London, but "normally" allows a good deal more time for planning.

Comments

[liv]

I sometimes use Skyscanner, which is a fairly decent flight meta-search thing, and quite good at handling complex journeys, and giving you options to minimize cost or insist on particular timing or whatever combination. I have a feeling that Abi from Making Light is or was involved with it somehow. It tends to be a bit patchy for transatlantic, but sometimes you find a better deal there than going to travel agents or just relying on Google. I believe it's paid for by taking a bit of a kick-back when you surf outwards from the links it provides to book a ticket from one of its partners.

Airports: you want to fly into Heathrow or Gatwick, not Stansted, Stansted has remarkably poor connections to the city considering it's supposed to be a London airport. (Gatwick is on the south side of London, yes, but it has excellent train connections to the centre and north.) Also consider: Birmingham or Luton, as they're at least as well connected to London as the big airports, and sometimes cheaper. AYKB, England is a small country, so an airport in a different city often isn't that far away on the ground.

I expect I'm probably just too far out of London to provide much in the way of practical help or company while you're here. But "too far" is only an hour and a half on the train, so do let me know if there's anything I can do.

[redbird]

Thank you.

Note that I would be aiming for Finchley (north London) rather than the center of the city; I incline toward Heathrow because it has a tube station.