How to airfare Belfast?
 

Is there a way to find the least expensive plan to Belfast Ireland?
My friend will need 3 tickets round trip from Spokane (GEG) to Belfast Ireland. Dates are August 18 to Aug 28. Dates can be somewhat flexible if that well help.
Can you please point me in the right direction? $1600 p/p is the least expensive I have found so far. Do not have points or anything else to use.

Thanks in advance for helping a newbie!

(if it makes a difference 2 of the three are college students and the other is a high school student. Otherwise, all three will be adults.)

kayak.com or google.com/flights. You can find some more links in the wiki here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...faqs-more.html

Look in the following section:

Go to Dublin instead and take the bus

Thanks for the replies. I don't think of Flyertalk as a travel agency. Just a place with experienced flyers. I have never flown internationally so I just wanted some extra help.

Google.com/flights is easy to use, and consider alternate airports. Looks like DUB as suggested by Calchas gets the price down to the $1300s. West coast departures from SEA, PDX, SFO to DUB are in the low $1100s, and JFK-DUB is $818.

I visited Belfast on a work assignment recently and agree that it's difficult to get there from overseas. Belfast's two airports are small and mostly served by regional airlines. I chose to fly in to LHR on my trip because I needed to visit a few sites in the UK and Northern Ireland. I used trains, buses, and regional airlines to travel between smaller cities. If I were visiting only Belfast I would probably fly to Dublin and take a bus to Belfast. Bus services run nonstop from DUB airport to Belfast downtown approximately hourly throughout the day at a cost of somewhere around $20 US. It's an easy, 2 hour ride.

Your best option cost wise would be to drive or bus to seattle and get a Seattle to Dublin roundtrip fight.

YVR-DUB (via LHR out and YYZ back) is 1000 USD per person

Real creativity is needed here. I'm in Belfast currently, and the international flight options are certainly limited. Dublin has more options, and as a result, some lower prices. Bus and train service from Dublin to Belfast will be quite adequate so an internet search for options and prices will help. My sisters took the train from central Dublin to central Belfast last November, and the trip took around two hours so if the prices justify flying through Dublin, there isn't a huge extra time investment.

Your travel dates are part of the problem. August is one of the peak travel times in Europe; as a result, prices jump accordingly. I am assuming the dates for travel are inflexible, but if they could change, you might find some cheaper fares, especially by late September/early October. Since you mentioned the travelers are students, I think my assumption about the travel dates is probably correct so that won't help much here.

The front end will also create a problem. As you might imagine, Spokane is not a major flight center, and I'm sure there's little market pressure on prices. Another starting point, like SEA, would increase the chances of finding a lower fare, but I know that Spokane is roughly 300 miles from Seattle so that it's not easy to just drive there.

But I see you have Southwest, American, and Alaska flying in and out so there is the potential to use points in a limited fashion to get to an international hub, like Seattle or San Francisco or Los Angeles. If there is an option to open a credit card that earns points, either a Southwest card or a Chase British Airways card might be worthwhile. If interested, you should check out FT's airline and credit card forums (or have the students do it--make 'em work a bit!) for details on how these programs work, but in very TL, DR fashion, Southwest points are revenue based so that each point is worth some value on a published fare while BA has a distance and segment based program that makes it possible to do a roundtrip on AA or Alaska for 9K--so long as the nonstop distance is less than 650 miles. I believe each card has a 50K signup bonus currently, which might, might be enough three travelers.

Finally, it's possible that routing through an airport that wouldn't immediately come to mind could also save money. For instance, AMS seems to attract some low fares. Two Norwegian airlines, Norwegian and WOW Air, are trying to put some downward pressure on airfares but mostly to the East Coast. Why could this even possibly help? Ryanair in Dublin is famous for really low fares from lots of European airports to Dublin--and some really outrageous fees if a traveler isn't careful about booking or baggage or other items Ryanair charges for that wouldn't have occurred to a traveler 20 years ago. With this in mind, however, a trip through another European gateway that Ryanair services might help to lower the cost.

So, if the fares are to come down significantly, some form of the following is probably going to necessary: drive to Seattle/use a credit cards' points to get to SEA, SFO, LAX, DEN, ORD to get to DUB or to get to AMS, OSL, or some other European gateway to DUB, train/bus from DUB to Belfast. Would you or I like to travel that way? No, but these are young students who may be willing to take on some adventures to save a significant amount of cash. As mentioned above, have them do some of the heavy research here on FT and through Google Flights and other similar services to try to piece together the puzzle.

But, if they're unwilling to do the research/odd travel, and the question is going to remain, what's the cheapest they can get from Spokane to Belfast for specific travel dates this August, you've probably already got the answer.

There is a direct bus / coach service between downtown Belfast and Dublin International Airport; it's under two hours' travel.

Use Google to check flights, including Icelandair via KEF, Norwegian (no Seattle flights, but fly from OAK and LAX to OSL and connect to DUB.

The only scheduled USA flight into BFS is the United Newark service. According to the Spokane airport wiki, United fly Spokane-Denver. Therefore to fly into BFS you could do Spokane-Denver-Newark-BFS.

The suggestions to fly into Dublin instead are sound ones. Not only will you have more options, but likely the flights will be cheaper (even allowing for the waiver of UK APD on the united BFS flight).

For example, You could fly Spokane-Atlanta-Dub on Delta. You could also fly Spokane-Chicago O'hare on United, and then Chicago-Dub on Aer Lingus.

There would be other options as well.

Read the response from lwildernorva - that is an excellent assessment. I've done that trip more than a few dozen times from the US. I'm headed there in July. You are seeing higher fares because it's the high season. If you can go in September or later it will be cheaper. Otherwise, if price is more important than schedule - as lwildernorva pointed out look for alternate airports. There are a number of low cost airlines in Europe that fly to BFS and BHD - Easyjet and Jet2 come to mind. Look at major European cities (FRA, BER, KRK, KTW, FCO etc - but avoid SVO - you can find cheap flights to SVO but the visa and other costs outweigh the savings) and if you can find a cheap flight just connect there to Belfast. I would avoid London as that tends to drive up the cost but there are other options beyond LGW and LHR. And Dublin is almost always cheaper than Belfast. I much prefer the train to the bus. On the Dublin side you have to get from the airport to the bus station. On the Belfast side the bus station is in the center of town. And if you have a choice, BHD is easier than BFS (which is a good distance outside Belfast).

The one thing I will say is to do everything not to transit through London. Look at flying into Dublin as others have suggested. The bus from Dublin airport to Belfast city centre is quick and cheap. It is much easier than making an extra stop trying to fly into a Belfast airport.