Best fares from UK to US

[Susiesnowflake]

For any of you UK visitors, do you find that fares are cheaper at particular times of the year for flying from the UK to US? Would you recommend any one carrier over another? My sister lives in the England, and we'd love to get over for a visit!

Thank you. And cheers!

 

[cbird]

For any of you UK visitors, do you find that fares are cheaper at particular times of the year for flying from the UK to US? Would you recommend any one carrier over another? My sister lives in the England, and we'd love to get over for a visit!

Thank you. And cheers!

Most of July and August are very expensive as that is the school holiday period. Of course the obvious holidays ie Christmas and Easter also. We have found that Feb/March are usually fairly low outside Easter. Also sometimes at the end of June and Beginning of July just before the school holidays begin. As to choice of carrier I would say that this depends on which airport you would prefer to use and the routing of various airlines. Also whether you have frequent flyer programmes with any particular group.

Hope you manage to work it out.

 

[kristieuk]

I take it that you mean you want her to visit you over in the US?

You get a lot of offers if you travel Oct / Nov time (as well as in Jan / Feb / March) - typical prices at that time £200 return to JFK. In our experience, British Airways and American are good at these types of specials, and that's the price we have paid for flights to NY and Atlanta in the last couple of years.

If she wanted to travel early 2006 for example, I would start looking for special offers around October / November this year.
If she will need a connecting flight, we have always found it cheaper to book tickets separately eg Feb this year, Heathrow - JFK £200 / JFK - Las Vegas with JetBlue $139.

Good luck!

 

[cbird]

I take it that you mean you want her to visit you over in the US?

You get a lot of offers if you travel Oct / Nov time (as well as in Jan / Feb / March) - typical prices at that time £200 return to JFK. In our experience, British Airways and American are good at these types of specials, and that's the price we have paid for flights to NY and Atlanta in the last couple of years.

If she wanted to travel early 2006 for example, I would start looking for special offers around October / November this year.
If she will need a connecting flight, we have always found it cheaper to book tickets separately eg Feb this year, Heathrow - JFK £200 / JFK - Las Vegas with JetBlue $139.

Good luck!

Ive never used a different onward carrier from the gateway. Is there a website listing the low price airlines in the states? Did the onward travel work out ok. It is a big saving against going on with the original carrier.

 

[vernon]

Cbird here's a couple of sites that may help you .
http://www.sidestep.com is a site that my DW Jana used quite a lot, she thought they had some good deals. http://www.orbitz.com and http://www.expedia.com are worth checking as well, although from the UK Expedia may try to take you to the (more expensive) UK site.

The only major problem with booking an on going flight with another airline is that if your original flight is delayed/cancelled they have no obligation to get you on a later flight. If you are booked all the way through on one airline they will get to your final destination eventually.
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To the original poster/question
Susie, for your sister to fly to the US I've found that using http://www.ba.com (which is British Airways website) it's much easier than most websites to work out if you change your plans slightly which days of the week or times of year are the cheapest to travel. You can request they give you flight costs +or- up to 14 days around your expected travel date, this can often allow you to make a huge saving by leaving/returning a day or two earlier or later. As has been said, avoiding school holidays and big times like Xmas and Easter would be the most likely time to get cheap flights. Other companies to check are http://www.ebookers.com ( they also work under the name flightbookers) and to call Airlinenetwork who advertise in the UK newspapers.

In general flights to New York ( in particular) and Boston to a lesser degree can be snagged for some very cheap prices if you don't mind too much which airline you fly with. Kuwait Airways and Saudia used to offer some great deals
but they don't serve alcohol on the flight , Air India, Malaysian and Singapore air also were regular companies that would discount quite heavily.

For choice (if costs was equal) , my preference would be American Airlines or USAirways for the size seats they offer, but if that's not an issue , I would look at British Airways or Virgin.

 

[kristieuk]

Ive never used a different onward carrier from the gateway. Is there a website listing the low price airlines in the states? Did the onward travel work out ok. It is a big saving against going on with the original carrier.

I don't know of any website listing the low cost fares - but I do know that JetBlue are possibly one of the few 'no frills' airlines that we are quite used to in Europe. Delta have their own brand call 'Song' but I don't know of any others, besides the established airlines.

We have had no difficulty at all - there may be a change of terminal, but this is normally the case even using the same airline. The only difficulty I could foresee is if the first flight was late and the onward flight was missed - the carrier is bound to be more helpful if it was their flight you were delayed on, but touch wood, this has never happened to us.

It can definitely be a cheaper way of flying, and we would do it again.