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.

[voidampersand]

I second the recommendation for Skyscanner.

For rail travel, I really like National Rail's Online Journey Planner. It includes the London Underground as well as all the train systems. I use it to work out my itinerary before the trip, print out the train times and connections, and buy tickets when I get to a train station in the UK.

The train connection from Gatwick really is excellent. It is a much smaller airport than Heathrow, and the train station is directly connected to the main terminal building, so getting to the train is much easier. It is on the main southern line so the trains are frequent. It is closer in to London than Heathrow. And there are lots of connections to other trains and to the Underground.

Heathrow has many more airlines and flights than Gatwick so you are more likely to find a good deal flying in to Heathrow, especially for a transatlantic flight. An alternative to the tube is the Heathrow Express. It really is very fast. The short journey time and the fact that it is a full size train dedicated to airport travelers makes it much more comfortable than the tube. It's much more expensive, but it is worth considering anyway.

[ckd]

For trip pricing like this, I recommend http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ or http://matrix2.itasoftware.com/ -- I work for ITA, but not on the search product, and you can't actually buy through us anyway. (You can buy from one of our customers, though! :-)

You probably want the newer Matrix 2 interface, since it gives you a calendar of cheapest days to travel (though this won't work for the open jaw BOS-LON-NYC, you could specify a round trip from BOS,JFK,EWR to London and eliminate or deal with any BOS-LON-BOS options).

On each leg you can specify multiple airports/cities separated by semicolons (in Matrix and Matrix 2) or commas (Matrix 2):
BOS;NYC will be Logan plus all NYC-area airports (you may not want to rule out LGA; connections might be cheaper than direct from JFK/EWR); BOS;JFK;EWR will limit to those airports.

LON will include (IIRC) LHR/LGW/STN/LTN/LCY; as with NYC, you can specify particular airports if you so choose.

My general thought is to do a wide search first, seeing if there are any particularly cheap options, then narrow it down to your preferred airports.

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

The last time I flew on an open jaw ticket (about 10 months ago), I used Yahoo! Travel--which is really just Travelocity dressed in different clothes. I tend to book flights via Orbitz and/or JetBlue's own web site, but in that case, I found I got a much much better deal via the Yahoo network. I did fly in and out of Newark, but it was really cheap, and I was heading cross-country. Just use the "multi-city" or "multiple destinations" search feature.

Is it worth considering if there are any airlines offering flights to London that are headquartered either here or in Boston? EWR is a Continental hub, as I'm sure you know -- and they have, in the past, provided check-in at Penn Station for those people who are getting to Newark via Amtrak/NJT/bus service. I'm not 100% sure if that is still operational but it seems worth checking out.

Good luck!

[ckd]

Based on your edit, I searched on Matrix 2 for 3-6 night trips for the month starting today, leaving from BOS/JFK/EWR and going into any LON airport, limiting to 1 stop or less.

Lowball is 6 nights, arrive Mar 9 return Mar 15th for $577 RT, nonstop both ways:
"KLM" (actually Delta, codeshared) JFK-LHR, leave JFK 7:05pm March 8, arrive LHR 7:30am March 9 OR
"KLM" (DL) JFK-LHR, leave JFK 8:55pm March 8, arrive LHR 9:25am March 9

and returning
"KLM" (DL) LHR-JFK, leave LHR 9:05am March 15, arrive JFK 1:25pm OR
"KLM" (DL) LHR-JFK, leave LHR 5:05pm March 15, arrive JFK 9:45pm

There are other options and you can tweak the dates and times a bit, but I'm hoping that you can find something that's not too expensive for what you need.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Can't help at all on the pricing, but if your schedule will permit (I understand it will involve many family obligations and may be tight) I would love to meet up with you.

Also, I have a feeling that more US airlines fly to Gatwick than to Heathrow. Gatwick is nowhere near London really, but it's only 35 minutes on the slow train (the Gatwick Express is overpriced, considering it is only 5 minutes faster to Victoria). If your ultimate goal is North London (a guess based on your suggestion of Stansted), some Thameslink/First Capital Connect trains stop at Gatwick and then go to up to Kings Cross or beyond.

[drplokta]

Stansted is unlikely to work, because it handles short-haul flights only. It has no transatlantic destinations. Your only choices at the London end for direct economy-class flights are Heathrow and Gatwick (there's also an all-business-class flight from London City to JFK).

As baratron says, Gatwick is easier than Heathrow for many destinations north of London, thanks to the Thameslink trains.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

If it helps, I can recommend a travel agent who's good at finding cheap tickets on short notice.

[redbird]

Yes, please. Can I have their name, number, etc.