It looks like my best bet to fly to eastern europe this fall is to connect through Heathrow for one of the discount airlines that fly out of the other London airports. Any information on transfers between airports and the cost and time to get from one to the other. Thank you.

This site here shows the various options.

Things to consider: Any journey from Heathrow or Gatwick to another london airport will need to travel for at least part of the way on the M25 - sometimes Europe's biggest carpark.

Unless you are flying business class and can guarantee a quick exit from Heathrow, then it is recommended you allow at least 3 hours between landing time and Check in, so effectively 5 hours.

My personal belief is that unless you are saving a fortune, or cannot get a transfer within a reasonable time period, then it is not worth the hassle.

Sometimes the schedules airlines can work out cheaper than the budget airlines - depending on how far in advance you can book.

TimW

Thank you TimW. I would rather book direct with a scheduled airline but we want to go from the States to Split, Croatia. Any ideas?

My daughter flew from Dulles to Vienna and then to Croatia in May. They booked their trip through United and were routed on United, Austrian Airlines and Croatian Airlines, all of which are part of the the STAR Alliance airline network. Her routing was Austin to Dulles on United, Austrian to Vienna, and Croatian to Zagreb.... so only one stop after leaving the US.

Bill

Thanks Fibonacci. I think I saw a number of your postings on the Croatia site. I will be in Split and Dubrovnik, can you help with any recommendations?

quote:

I will be in Split and Dubrovnik, can you help with any recommendations?

I'll ask her if she has recommendations.

Bill

In Dubrovnik we stayed at a hotel - Hotel Neptune at Importanne Resort. In Split we had an apartment. Here's the link:
http://www.clicksplit.com/Split-Orchid-Comfort-49.html

We enjoyed both accommodations, but the apartment was much more convenient and better priced. I would highly recommend it. It is close to the fish market - not so close that you could smell it from the apartment, but close enough that we found ourselves passing by it more times than I might have chosen.

A correction to my dad's earlier post - we flew in to Dubrovnik, not Zagreb.

If you can fly into London Gatwick then Easyjet flies from there to Split so you wouldn't need to change airports.

Thank you CDT. We are looking at a USAirways flight into Gatwick and the very connection to Easy Jey you are recommending. It looks promising. A layover of about 8 hours may leave time for a tube ride into London for lunch.

The tube doesn't stretch as far as Gatwick. If I had 8 hours to kill I would be very tempted to go to Brighton. There are direct Gatwick - Brighton trains every 15 minutes or so.

You could have lunch in Brighton, then a walk around, then a civilised afternoon tea before returning to Gatwick.

The railway station is actually linked to one of the terminals at Gatwick.