Why on earth fly direct? A personal view.

[joe 70]

Originally Posted by Rac20

Ive flown with numerous airlines including Virgin, Emirates, Qantas and found Thomas Cook great. Staff were great and the food was good too (If airline food can be good?). The only thing lacking was the IFE was a bit poor compared to the others.

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IFE won’t bother me , there’s always I-Spy or Charades!

[snowbelle]

We always do indirect as we usually make it a two centre .
Reasons for us are :
* Gatwick & Manchester are a pain to get to for us
* Heathrow suits us
* we like two centre holidays, have done Washington- Orlando , Toronto - Orlando , lhr-atl- rsw( fort myers for the keys and gulf coast)
Plus many more.
* I don’t like MCO at a push I like to go in as a domestic passenger

Next month we are going Boston driving up to Freeport Maine for a couple of days then flying internally from Portland Maine to fort myers for ten days.
Flying back to Boston for two days then back to LHR.
So essentially three holidays in one.

We do not have children though so I can understand those who want less hassle by going straight in to SFB or MCO.
Internal flights work well for us as You can get good deals on first class flights very often so don’t need to pay for extra bags( when I say good deals , for example £185 round trip good deals) for first with delta this time .

[muzland]

Flown direct and indirect and the primary concern for us was always the price. As family of 6 even a relatively small saving can make a big difference. Eldest daughter pays her own way now but I still need to find the money for 4 adult fares and a child as the two lads are classed as adults now. Still two school age children and my wife also works in a school so we are pretty much tied to school holidays as well.

I view it as simply getting to my destination and will put up with a bit of hassle for the savings. Leaves more money in the pot for the good stuff in Orlando.

I like what Cornishfrogman does with stopping over a few nights in the connecting city. Definitely on my list to do for places like Chicago, Washington, etc. We have done this in Miami before when we flew into there.

Clearing immigration in US outside of Orlando or Dublin helps when you land in Florida. Much quicker through the airport and to the car hire.

We have had problems twice flying indirect, one of which we could have avoided with better planning. We had issues with snow flying in and out of Washington one Christmas. Easily avoided if you avoid the indirects using the northern hubs. I am certainly mindful of that now when booking in the winter months.

The 2nd time we had an issue was with United. We had no pilot and were delayed 6 hours leaving the UK, this meant we missed our connections. Silver lining is the EU compensation for flight delays over 4hrs. This amounted to 600 Euros each in compensation making the flights effectively free! I hope we retain this protection after brexit as it keeps the airlines on their toes.

None of the hassles we have had have put me off flying indirect.

Happy to fly from London airports even though we are 30 mins from Manchester airport if we can get the savings. Flown into Sanford, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Miami in the past. This years trips are into Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

We quite often don't do multiples of 7 days now and happy to fly on any day of the week. This can definitely make a difference on the price.

[squishy]

I did indirect for the first time in 2017 via Frankfurt - so no benefit of breaking the flight time up or clearing customs outside MCO, but it was half the cost of a direct flight as I was tied to mid August.

I’d have preferred to go via New York, or Boston (and love the idea of a train trip!) to have a couple of days somewhere else first (love the idea of ticking off the bucket list!).

Any tips for booking a trip which includes a layover on the outward journey would be much appreciated!