Airports Close to Ottawa

[canadian_mouse]

Is Syracuse the closest American airport to Ottawa?

I'm looking to book a flight to Orlando in January 2010. Flying JetBlue from Syracuse is about $1000 cheaper than flying out of Ottawa on Westjet. But the 3.5 hour drive from Ottawa to Syracuse will be a hassle with my two young kids. Is there a closer American airport that offers good flight prices to Orlando?

Anyone got any good cheap flight tips for January 2010?

Cheers.

 

[Josh Hendy]

I believe that there are closer airports at NY towns like Ogdensburg, Watertown and (maybe) Massena and Plattsburgh at which you could get feeder flights to larger airports and from there to Orlando. But whenever I searched for flights from these airports using Expedia.ca I never found anything that could compete, pricewise, with flights from places like SYR, BTV, ROC, BUF. I never tried to use a travel agent or go through the airlines own web sites or agents, so maybe if you try them it will be possible to find better prices. I seem to recall that the prices from these places was comparable to flying from YOW and YUL but you might want to check anyways.

If you're a white-knuckle flier you may not like these small-town airports as they probably have service only on turboprop airplanes.

Incidentally, in my occasional surfing for flights over the last couple of years, the cheapest flights I ever found that were within striking distance of Ottawa were some $50 flights on discount airline from BUF (at like 4am, I think it might have been Jet Blue). And as far as regular airlines go, I consistently found flights at Philadelphia which were cheaper than BTV, SYR, BUF. But that's a heck of a drive, especially in the middle of winter. You get lake effect snow from Watertown through Syracuse, and mountains from Syracuse all the way until Allentown PA.

I believe that there are also charter flights from YOW and YUL to Daytona, Orlando and Tampa, maybe that is something you can look into.

Good luck!