Why on earth fly direct? A personal view.

[catherinesian]

Both my OH and I dislike flying and both breathe a huge sigh of relief when we touch down at destination. The thought of adding another plane journey to that is not ideal and I would pay more to get a direct flight.

We live about 1hr from Heathrow and 1hr30 from Gatwick, so are reasonably lucky. We do book a hotel the night beforehand, anyway. Few weeks ago we stayed at the Hilton Gatwick North (not Florida) and we are booked into the T5 Premier Inn for September.

For our next trip, we wanted to fly into New Orleans and BA are the only carrier that fly direct from UK>MSY, so we knew we were stuck with BA for both legs.

Looking at car hire for those 21 days was coming out at just under £1k plus a one way drop fee of between $300-$400. So about £1,200 all in (for a decent SUV).

We booked with BA (a week after the flights were released) a flydrive, direct LHR>MSY and return MCO>LGW for £1,800 (2 ad). If you factor in the £1,200 we were being quoted for a car that works out at direct return flights £300pp. Flying in and out of different London airports is a bit of a faff, but we would have been unlikely to want to leave our car at parking for 3 weeks anyway and have family who can shuttle us to/from the airport (we all do for each other when we go on hols).

I guess we are lucky, we live near two international airports and can go outside of school holidays (for now), which opens up a lot of options for cheaper / more reasonable flights.

[LadyFromage]

Your family and mine would make great travel companions.

I love the adventure, seeing new places. Even to have a day in New York is amazing and will always be remembered. Also factoring in the train from Boston you'll see so much!

This time we are flying direct as it was cheapest. But last year I went to Las Vegas via Chicago and saved myself over £1000. I wouldn't hesitate to do it all over again.


America is a great place to explore and have connecting flights. Not many better places to do it if it all goes wrong considering everyone speaks English and all the signs are in English. I would be a bit more apprehensive about doing these sorts of things if they weren't in my native language!

[duchy]

I think it's just an entirely different mindset . One I share.
However if my kind of holiday was get there as quickly as possible , stay in the bubble for two weeks in one hotel and enjoy the familiarity of returning to do the same as often as possible I'd probably not get it either.
I used to fly indirect for financial reasons but soon realized it was an opportunity to see new places rather than an inconvenience . If I'm going to pay for an airport hotel it may as well be Dublin, Gothenburg, Chicago etc rather than Gatwick. Sometimes the benefits are great. I needed to go to Dublin to pick up some documents . I left my luggage at Gatwick left luggage, flew to Dublin, collected my documents , had tea at Bewleys and flew back to Gatwick, stayed in an on terminal hotel and next morning woke early so checked my bag then went back to bed for an hour with Costa and pastries before a quick shower and stroll to security. Very relaxing and the same direct flight to Vegas direct even after allowing for hotel and a cheap Ryanair to start my journey in Dublin ... was £300 saving for exactly the same Transatlantic flight (plus whatever it would have cost me to go to Dublin another time)

My worst delays have been when flying direct apart from one which got me a free hotel and 24 hours in New York , hardly a hardship to jump on the train into Manhattan.

Different strokes for different folks and a lot in the mindset !

[mrsbenny]

We usually stick to school hols but taking kids out of school 1 week before Oct half term this year as want to see Halloween. Won’t do it again though will be sticking to summer after this year. We live in County Durham and our closest airport is Newcastle and it has no competition so very high prices. We are travelling to Manchester in October.
We went ncl- and- dtw-mco in 2017. The flight from Detroit to Orlando got cancelled due to weather and we were going to be stuck at airport for 2 days but I managed to book some flights and paid extra to leave the next day. It really did put me off indirect but we have no choice living here we either go indirect or travel hours to another airport. I have also been looking at Edinburgh flights for future trips. Newcastle airport is rubbish when it comes to choice and prices!

[Merryweather17]

There are lots of reasons why people do not like indirect and lots of reasons why they work for people, I am happy to go indirect, just the thought of it had my mum in a flap and finding every possible disaster scenario Our next trip involves flying into NYC then bus to Philly and an internal flight to Orlando so am interested to see how 'relaxing' we find this. It will be a very different trip to our usual few weeks at wdw. I completely agree that unusual length trips can save a lot of money and we prefer 15-18 days now, there is so much to do and with a 14 day ticket there is no rushing and you can take the time to soak up the atmosphere and visit lots of shops.

[BevS97]

Originally Posted by GenoviaPrincess

I fly direct because when I'm going on holiday it's generally to avoid stress rather than to put myself in potentially highly stressful situations. Flying indirectly presents (and increases) the risk of missed connections, bigger delays getting to your final destination, lost baggage, just generally running round an airport frantically. If I can afford to fly directly and avoid (or lessen the chance of) those things, I don't see why I would opt into them voluntarily.

I have flown indirectly to destinations when I've had no choice (such as when I went to Finnish Lapland and had to go via Helsinki), but to be honest I would rather save money in areas other than the flights. If an indirect flight presented a saving of many hundreds of pounds and didn't have a risky connection time, it would probably be a no brainer. But I've never seen a saving of more than about two or three hundred, and quite frankly that isn't worth the increased stress for me.

Helps that I live right by Gatwick airport too I suppose.

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£200 or £300 for a family of 4 is a saving of £1000. For that we can take the stress. When it’s just the two of us we may feel differently.

[NewtoOrlando]

This year is our 3rd trip, all been booked DIY and all for an odd amount of days. I love researching holidays and finding flights/prices that work for us as a family. We are on Heathrows doorstep...a 20 min drive away (sometimes less depending on traffic around the airport) so heathrow is our 1st choice. I HATE Gatwick with a passion. We also like a direct flight, so with going from Heathrow, that leaves us flying into Miami and driving up the next day. This doesn't bother us at all, as we usually go for long enough that losing that first night doesn't really affect our holiday days. We also like to see the beach, nothing warms me more than waking up and seeing the sunrise over the ocean. The kids don't mind the drive thankfully, they have their ipads/phones and sleep/eat... they're used to long drives as our family are in Cornwall so its a minimum 4 hours each way to them a few times a year. They're now 13 & 11.


Our first trip in 2016 was for 17 days end if August into Sept. Flights LHR to MIA with BA. 7 seater car for the duration and a night in a Miami hotel. Cost for the 4 of us was £2200 - so £550pp.


2nd trip in 2018 was for 20 days end of August again. Heathrow to Miami again, chevy subrurban for 20 days. 1 night at Deerfield Beach. Total price was £2500 - slightly more than 2016 but longer duration and a better standard of car. So £625pp.


This year, we're going for 12 days due to it being October and only having one week school holiday to work with. Flying LGW to MCO (overnight at the prem inn for £35) and home from MIA to LHR - chevy Tahoe or similar and a night at St Petes beach in the middle. This was £2060 so just over £500pp. We made this decision to go from Gatwick because we only had 12 days so didn't want to lose a day in Miami (wouldn't have been an issues had we be going for longer) and we wanted to land back at Heathrow without an indirect flight so made sense to drive down to Miami. We wont have valid tickets for that day so no worries about losing a park day etc. Will have a slow drive down stopping for food on the beach.


Our choices into Florida are always budget led, and Miami has always worked out the best price wise for a direct flight to Florida from Heathrow. I do find going for different durations helps with the price Our next US trip might not involve Florida (if it does no theme parks) but we're hoping to do a road trip so looking forward to playing around with flights and seeing what I can come up with! This site was invaluable when I first started looking!

[firsttimemouse]

If I was flying by myself Indirect wouldn’t bother me but dh and kids get quite stressed about travelling. I want our holiday to be as stress free as possible so am prepared to pay extra for direct flights. I want the highest chance of getting where we’re going as quick as possible, with our luggage, not missing connections which could result in us not sitting together etc.

[duchy]

My husband had never flown indirect or long haul and took a bit of convincing to book to fly into FLL last year. In the end we switched to Orlando direct a month before but he got an understanding of distances as we did travel to south Florida too.
This year he moaned I booked direct into Orlando now he understands the advantage of flying into Orlando domestically rather than clear customs and immigration there.

[Saratoska]

flying does not bother us but feel the flight is long enough without doing indirect .

we have a paralised DS so it would not be an option anyway but even if had not had his accident we would still not want to fly indirect

we do flights only, flying from Scotland for 21 nights