Best airport to fly to American from in the UK?

Silent UK

Silent UK

Silent UK

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Joined
11 Apr 2009
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Location
Leeds, UK
Hey, hoping someone can help me with this, as it seems like a minefield!

First off I'm planning on flying out to Dayton-Ohio in a few weeks time and was wondering which airports are best to fly from as most I've searched seem to fly to Paris/Amsterdam then across to Detroit, with a massive 4/5hours between flights, aghhh!!

Also if I'm only going for less than 7days (4/5) do I need to get a travel Visa or anything like that to go across to the States? As its been years since I was last there and I don't think I did when I was in Florida for a week.

Cheer's
 
You do the VISA on the plane but you need to fill out a ESTA form https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/ and pay $16. You'll need to do this asap if you're flying within a week. You have to do it within 72hours of flying, so get it done now.

Any major airport such as Manchester will have numous flights but as the airport you're flying to isn't a "hub" you'll probably find they won't be direct. For example US Airways hub is Phili, so you'd probably go there first then change. Fact is you'll probably have a layover regardless due to your destination.

Take your pick:

http://www.kayak.co.uk/#/flights/MAN-DAY/2012-10-03-flexible/2012-10-21-flexible
 
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You don't and never have (as a UK citizen) had to do a visa on the plane. You did a visa waiver (to exempt you from needing an actual visa). This was the green form which ESTA replaced. They did run them in parallel for a while so you had to do both, but you no longer need to. The white form you still fill out is a customs declaration.

You're right in saying 72 hours though!
 
It's far far cheaper to get yourself to Amsterdam first and then fly Amsterdam > London > US, as you avoid any UK airport taxes, you can save a couple of hundred quid this way and still end up the same flight you would have if flying direct from London.
 
Moredhel said:
It's far far cheaper to get yourself to Amsterdam first and then fly Amsterdam > London > US, as you avoid any UK airport taxes, you can save a couple of hundred quid this way and still end up the same flight you would have if flying direct from London.
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Any examples of this? And surely you have to fly to Amsterdam therefore incurring UK airport tax's? :p

I'm a sucker for convenience personally.
 
Cheer's for the quick response guys, I've had a look on the ESTA website and it seems a fairly simple process. I've not even booked my flight yet, so can't enter the flight code required.

I plan of flying out on the 11th Oct, so still have time to get everything ready
 
I've never done this before but in this day and age I honestly thought the answer would have been "your nearest one". i.e. Go to your nearest (major) airport and fly straight over to America. Is it really this silly to have to take connecting flights back and forward?
 
jaybee said:
I've never done this before but in this day and age I honestly thought the answer would have been "your nearest one". i.e. Go to your nearest (major) airport and fly straight over to America. Is it really this silly to have to take connecting flights back and forward?
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You can tell you've never done it before :p

It is going to be almost impossible to fly direct to Ohio, infact it probably is impossible. If it is possible it'll be only from a very small number of airports. It certainly isnt as simple as simply going to your nearest airport - for Transatlantic flights if you want to fly from England you are limited pretty much to Heathrow, Gatwick or Manchester. There might be the odd one from Birmingham too but from the latter two the prices are not particularly competitive and the selection of operators is poor.

The air industry is based around hubs, not random flights from B to D sadly.
 
You can fly direct (for a lot of money) from Manchester/London to Cleveland, that's the closest you'll get. It's usually cheaper to take a connection flight via a European hub or through NYC or Chicago, to get to Cleveland, Dayton is a small airport so you'll have to hop about a bit.
 
One option is fly through Shannon in Ireland so you can pre-clear US customs / immigration

Shannon Airport is the first airport in the world, outside of the Americas, to offer Full US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) preclearance facilities to airlines travelling to the USA.

With this new facility your airline can land at any airport you choose in the USA. It allows you and your passengers to pre-clear all formalities for US Immigration, Customs and Agriculture.
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That's not guaranteed or on all flights though. The two BA flights from LCY to JFK pretty much exist to take advantage of this, but the later of the two flights will not be able to pre-clear after October due to restrictions on the time the officials are available in Shannon.
 
The closest International airport to Dayton will be Cincinnati, but it also happens to be the most expensive airport in the US to fly to/from and as it's a Delta hub there isn't much choice. I had to fly from Cinci to Baltimore, and when checking the prices with Delta it was twice as much to fly from Cinci to Baltimore as to fly from Dayton to Baltimore, despite the fact that the Dayton route was Dayton-Cinci-Baltimore (i.e. same flight). Air Tran fly out of Dayton to a number of US airports, so you should be able to get a connecting flight from most places.

If you want to go direct to Cinci I think only the Delta flight from Paris is left now (there used to be Gatwick and Amsterdam as well).
 
As I said, minefield! I'm going to take a look tomorrow when I get in from work and sign up for the pass if it lasts 2years. Can I go on multiple trips with the pass, or do I need to re apply each time I go?

unclelonghair said:
The closest International airport to Dayton will be Cincinnati, but it also happens to be the most expensive airport in the US to fly to/from and as it's a Delta hub there isn't much choice. I had to fly from Cinci to Baltimore, and when checking the prices with Delta it was twice as much to fly from Cinci to Baltimore as to fly from Dayton to Baltimore, despite the fact that the Dayton route was Dayton-Cinci-Baltimore (i.e. same flight). Air Tran fly out of Dayton to a number of US airports, so you should be able to get a connecting flight from most places.

If you want to go direct to Cinci I think only the Delta flight from Paris is left now (there used to be Gatwick and Amsterdam as well).
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