flying out of London (Ontario)

[briarberry]

Has anyone flown out of London, ON to Orlando lately? We are going again in August and I want to fly. Last time we flew out of Detroit and by the time we paid the shuttle service to the airport (from St. Thomas) it wasn't a great deal! I was just wondering if anyone had flown from the London airport and could offer some advice. Thanks

 

[MikeJ]

DW and I flew London to Orlando back in October on AC (first trip without the kids - check out my sig ) and I will never do it again. Negatives:

1) No direct flights (unless you've booked a charter through a TA).

2) Pearson is a mess with all the terminal construction going on. It took us an additional 30 minutes to change terminals, where we ran into....

3) US customs clearance is a huge cattle call. We had plenty of time between our connecting flights so we weren't worried, but it probably took us 30-40 to clear customs once we got in line. Don't need the aggravation.

I still much prefer flying Spirit out of DTW or Air Tran out of Flint. Flint was great - small airport, cheap parking (in a secure lot) and Air Tran does have one direct non-stop flight daily between FNT and MCO.

I really like the idea of clearing customs at the border - otherwise you're stuck lining up at either MCO or Pearson and potentially trying to clear customs at the same time as people from (literally) dozens of other flights.

Just my $0.02 worth. YMMV.

- Mike

 

[Daddio]

MikeJ, AirTran now flys out of DTW to MCO. I've always gone NWA or Spirit but I am sure some price competitions will change that one of these days.


briarberry, you're right about the Airbus. That's one long journey. We did it once and have taken the car since. We go 4 times a year so let me know when your next trip is and maybe you can hitch a ride. We usually do last week of Jan, last week of April to first week of May, First week in October and going to do New Year's eve this year. I'd love to fly out of London direct but could never justify the taxes

 

[briarberry]

Thanks to both of you. I had a feeling it wasn't going to be a go from London. I never even thought of Flint as an option. I will have to look into it. We are flying out on August 7 so I still have plenty of time to find a flight.

 

[MikeJ]

MikeJ, AirTran now flys out of DTW to MCO. I've always gone NWA or Spirit but I am sure some price competitions will change that one of these days.

I was aware that Air Tran now flew from DTW and also that NWA flies from FNT. The primary consideration for me is price. My ideal scenario is for the best price to be Air Tran from FNT-MCO. I prefer Air Tran to Spirit (the planes are more state-of-the-art) and I prefer flying out of Flint rather than DTW. But the last few times I've looked, there's been a larger difference between Air Tran's rates and Spirit's than I'm willing to pay, so we've ended up flying Spirit out of DTW. Occasionally you can catch a deal on NWA out of Flint (and they have one direct, non-stop flight daily) but those aren't as frequent as one would like. Or as *I* would like.

- Mike

 

[maryliz]

Have you considered Buffalo? I've flown 3 times from Buffalo to MCO in the past year and it's been great! Twice with Southwest, and once with AirTran. The only problem we had was on the return Air Tran flight. We had a scheduled 3 hour stopover in Atlanta, that ended up getting delayed by more than an extra hour. An Airtran plane in Buffalo needed mechanics and new flight attendants, so we had to wait in Atlanta while they brought on new crew to fly them to Buffalo. So it was a long travel day for us by the time we drove home to London that night.

The airport is easy to get to, and very easy to find your way around. Nothing like Detroit. Friends of mine have flown out of Flint and loved it too. They did have a stopover in Cincinnati.

Good luck!

MaryLiz