Yeah - 99% of the time its been cheaper for me to fly via Amsterdam to the US - in some cases even with the plane after I've got onto it at Amsterdam flying back to whichever UK airport I left from to go to Amsterdam on its way to the US :S when you are talking savings of £300-700 though...
Cheaper to fly from Manchester to Miami via Heathrow than direct from Heathrow?
- Thread starter shrek2
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Yeah - 99% of the time its been cheaper for me to fly via Amsterdam to the US - in some cases even with the plane after I've got onto it at Amsterdam flying back to whichever UK airport I left from to go to Amsterdam on its way to the US :S when you are talking savings of £300-700 though...
Associate
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Just looked on skyscanner and can get those flights for £400 with a couple of other cheaper options.
A few years back I was working out in France and I was unable to get a direct flight to Toulouse without travelling all the way down to either Gatwick or Heathrow ( I live in the North East) . So I had to fly out from Durham Tees Valley Airport to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol then onto Toulouse. Then the same route coming back. I think I saved about £300 and a lot of stress by not flying direct.
Wasn't there a website that looked up these connection flights so you could book them? Gone now because until recently you could just rock up and catch the connecting part going from your local airport for far less than a direct flight from the same place.
Soldato
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Looks like ur goin miami op.
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
Because you'll find your Heathrow flight leaving without you as no showing the first leg voids the entire itiniary.
I thought this was common knowledge.
So now we've answered the question lets look at why this happens.
On the surface it seems ridiculous nonsense - how can two flights be cheaper than one?
Well, it's because with point to point air travel, more flights = inferior product so you are not paying per flight, you are paying for transport from A to B. Airlines have flexibility in how they offer this product - they can offer direct flights from A to B or they can use hub airports to get you from A to B via C.
In this case we have to look at Manchester to Miami and London to Miami as two different markets - different customers, different needs and different competition. There will be a small overlap of people who can go to either, but generally, people won't look for flights like that.
If we look at the dates the OP wishes to travel we can see that there is something of a price war going on between indirect carriers. There is loads of choice.
You can fly Finnair via Helsinki, Lufthansa via Frankfurt, Austrian via Vienna, American via Philadelphia or KLM via Amsterdam. They are all similar money. So if you pop into the market here and try to flog people British Airways via London for £600 you'll sell no seats. So, to remain competitive, you need to price at a similar amount to the competition. Which is what has happened and is how we arrive at that price for Manchester to Miami via London.
Lets move to London.
The same indirect options exist but are around £100 more expensive. So, you've no need to go in so cheap. Plus, the British Airways product is now a demonstrably superior product - it is a direct, non-stop flight which is considerably quicker, so people are willing to pay more for it. So if you price it at the same price as the Manchester flight - or perhaps even less because you don't need to sell the shorthaul seat - you will very quickly sell all available seats for far less than you could reasonable have expected to get for it. So you don't.
And thats why its cheaper to fly Manchester to London to Miami than it is London to Miami on the same plane.
So why can't you just buy the Manchester ticket and get on at Heathrow? Because airlines are not stupid - it's therefore in the terms that if you no-show for any segment on a flight booking, the rest of the booking is cancelled.
btw - those prices are insanely good. Book them ASAP. It doesn't get much cheaper than that to cross the Atlantic.
On the surface it seems ridiculous nonsense - how can two flights be cheaper than one?
Well, it's because with point to point air travel, more flights = inferior product so you are not paying per flight, you are paying for transport from A to B. Airlines have flexibility in how they offer this product - they can offer direct flights from A to B or they can use hub airports to get you from A to B via C.
In this case we have to look at Manchester to Miami and London to Miami as two different markets - different customers, different needs and different competition. There will be a small overlap of people who can go to either, but generally, people won't look for flights like that.
If we look at the dates the OP wishes to travel we can see that there is something of a price war going on between indirect carriers. There is loads of choice.
You can fly Finnair via Helsinki, Lufthansa via Frankfurt, Austrian via Vienna, American via Philadelphia or KLM via Amsterdam. They are all similar money. So if you pop into the market here and try to flog people British Airways via London for £600 you'll sell no seats. So, to remain competitive, you need to price at a similar amount to the competition. Which is what has happened and is how we arrive at that price for Manchester to Miami via London.
Lets move to London.
The same indirect options exist but are around £100 more expensive. So, you've no need to go in so cheap. Plus, the British Airways product is now a demonstrably superior product - it is a direct, non-stop flight which is considerably quicker, so people are willing to pay more for it. So if you price it at the same price as the Manchester flight - or perhaps even less because you don't need to sell the shorthaul seat - you will very quickly sell all available seats for far less than you could reasonable have expected to get for it. So you don't.
And thats why its cheaper to fly Manchester to London to Miami than it is London to Miami on the same plane.
So why can't you just buy the Manchester ticket and get on at Heathrow? Because airlines are not stupid - it's therefore in the terms that if you no-show for any segment on a flight booking, the rest of the booking is cancelled.
btw - those prices are insanely good. Book them ASAP. It doesn't get much cheaper than that to cross the Atlantic.
What do you do about your luggage?
You don't have to check it all the way through, you can collect and recheck yourself if you want (sometimes anyway...)
prices are also set according to departure market and destination value. E.g., people London earn more than average people in Manchester and so will be willing to pay more for the same flight. A popular destination for tourists will have higher prices than a middle of nowhere aiirport. E.g., I fly to Jackson Hole a lot and its prime tourist spot with high average hotel costs etc, so flight prices in tourist seasons can be more for an internal US flight than transatlantic.
fly with Cabin bags.
secret city flying i think is what people call it. csn get you banned though
Man of Honour
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The best way to search is Google Flights. Just put in a few options for your starting point and it'll show you the best routes and suggest options.
I used this tactic for my honeymoon to Hawaii. We did LHR-DUB-LCY-JFK-LAX-HNL in business which cost £1350 per person, versus something like £3500 per person to do LHR-LAX-HNL. So a total 'saving' of £4000ish. I say 'saving' because we wouldn't have spent £3500/person, we would've chosen a closer destination.
We lived by Heathrow at the time so took a Friday evening flight out to Dublin, stayed in a cheap hotel by the airport for £50, got the morning flight back to London and got the same flight we would've got if we simply flew from Heathrow on Saturday.
By the time we got on to the JFK-LAX flight it was midnight bodyclock time so we fell asleep for 5hrs across the US, arrived at LAX, slept the night in another nearby hotel, and arrived in Hawaii awake and relatively jetlag-free.
The worst part was arriving at LAX and hanging around for the airport shuttle/checkin. If we'd done LHR-LAX-HNL it would've just been straight on another plane, but the LAX-HNL journey is 6hrs on a plane without flat beds so no chance of sleeping, and we had 2hrs to drive to our hotel when we landed.
For the return, we did HNL-LAX-LHR-DUB but felt ill so missed our flight from Heathrow to Dublin and instead drove home.
We travelled with hand luggage only so baggage wasn't a problem.
Obviously the downside of all the above is that it was more flying and more hassle / chance of problems. Our outbound LHR-DUB flight was delayed just under 2 hours so we missed dinner in Dublin and were tired for the next day.
But I'm a bit of a geek and got to fly on lots of planes...(BA LCY-JFK A319, AA's new 77W, A380 upper deck), and we collected something like 60,000 airmiles which I've since redeemed for 4 or 5 otherwise-expensive trips around Europe.
And there were at least two other people doing the same thing on our outbound journey!
I've since done the same thing but from Brussels to Brazil and the crew loved it, the guy in my area did it himself too and so we swapped tips! He had me figured when he asked if I lived in Brussels.....
Finally, don't feel too bad for the airlines since a lot of folk in business will be on corporate fares so not paying the headline prices you see when you search anyway (tho admittedly some will be paying much more for last-minute travel.)
I used this tactic for my honeymoon to Hawaii. We did LHR-DUB-LCY-JFK-LAX-HNL in business which cost £1350 per person, versus something like £3500 per person to do LHR-LAX-HNL. So a total 'saving' of £4000ish. I say 'saving' because we wouldn't have spent £3500/person, we would've chosen a closer destination.
We lived by Heathrow at the time so took a Friday evening flight out to Dublin, stayed in a cheap hotel by the airport for £50, got the morning flight back to London and got the same flight we would've got if we simply flew from Heathrow on Saturday.
By the time we got on to the JFK-LAX flight it was midnight bodyclock time so we fell asleep for 5hrs across the US, arrived at LAX, slept the night in another nearby hotel, and arrived in Hawaii awake and relatively jetlag-free.
The worst part was arriving at LAX and hanging around for the airport shuttle/checkin. If we'd done LHR-LAX-HNL it would've just been straight on another plane, but the LAX-HNL journey is 6hrs on a plane without flat beds so no chance of sleeping, and we had 2hrs to drive to our hotel when we landed.
For the return, we did HNL-LAX-LHR-DUB but felt ill so missed our flight from Heathrow to Dublin and instead drove home.
We travelled with hand luggage only so baggage wasn't a problem.
Obviously the downside of all the above is that it was more flying and more hassle / chance of problems. Our outbound LHR-DUB flight was delayed just under 2 hours so we missed dinner in Dublin and were tired for the next day.
But I'm a bit of a geek and got to fly on lots of planes...(BA LCY-JFK A319, AA's new 77W, A380 upper deck), and we collected something like 60,000 airmiles which I've since redeemed for 4 or 5 otherwise-expensive trips around Europe.
And there were at least two other people doing the same thing on our outbound journey!
I've since done the same thing but from Brussels to Brazil and the crew loved it, the guy in my area did it himself too and so we swapped tips! He had me figured when he asked if I lived in Brussels.....
Finally, don't feel too bad for the airlines since a lot of folk in business will be on corporate fares so not paying the headline prices you see when you search anyway (tho admittedly some will be paying much more for last-minute travel.)
Man of Honour
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Haha I added that in at the end but didn't really refine the sentence....it was a reply to Washout. The tip is you just put in multiple starting airports in the From box. Close ones like AMS, BRU, DUB are good options.That is quite literally a Google Flights screenshot in the OP
Crazier people will do things like fly to Egypt first if they managed to book after the massive EGP devaluation before airlines adjusted their pricing!
Also, I've never heard of anyone getting a ban for dropping the final leg of a ticket. There's just no way it's a problem. Nobody can force you onto a plane. The worst they could do is close your frequent flyer account, which would likely be fruitless.
That said BA did go after a corporate travel agent for booking itineraries like this that they 'knew' people wouldn't complete.