Hi all,

Can anyone suggest the most cost-effective way of travelling from Charlotte to Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio or College Station?

I will be in the US for 10 days, flying in/out of Charlotte from the UK. I would like to split my trip so that I get about 5 days in Texas (including a weekend to get to an A&M football game), but I can't work out the best way to do it.

I am happy to drive to somewhere other than Charlotte to get a flight, but I'm struggling to get a picture of who flies from where to where! There will be two of us, and at the moment I'll assume we'll both have a checked bag. That may change, however!

Any suggestions for airlines or airports to look at would be much appreciated. We're both members of various Star Alliance programmes, but the airline/alliance isn't important - the price is!

Thanks in advance.

From Charlotte (CLT) you can get to most of Texas via a variety of carriers (US, UA, DL, CO, AA). You can try Southwest from either Raleigh, NC (RDU) or Greenville, SC (GSP).

AirTran CLT to DFW, HOU or SAT (all via ATL) are all on sale at the moment at the AirTran web site. I�m seeing autumn weekends at $279 all inclusive. Sometimes flying out of GSO (90 minute drive) is cheaper, or flying from GSP on Southwest (non-stops GSP-HOU), but the hassles usually outweigh the savings.

Kayak.com has a good search engine for this. It lets you specify up to 4 airports to search at once (comma separated list), so for example, you could search for flights from CLT to AUS,SAT,IAH,DFW. Then you can filter by times, nonstops, etc.

If you want to go nonstop, US has a hub at CLT and will serve several of your Texas choices. AA has nonstops to DFW and CO has them to IAH.

Note that Southwest flights are listed only on southwest.com.

ETA: If you have checked bags, there's no fee for those on Southwest. Unless you have status with the airline or alliance, all the other airlines will charge, around $25 each way for the first bag per passenger.

Thanks for the help - seems like I don't need to worry too much at looking at anywhere other than CLT.

I'll try searching on Kayak as you suggest swag, thanks for the tip.

Since you'll likely need to drive to College Station, I'd look at travel to IAH/HOU or AUS as potentially more convenient than DFW/DAL (180-200 mile drive), not omitting to check southwest.com for service into HOU (or even the extra leg to AUS, on which occasionally WN fares are actually cheaper).

Yes, I had hoped to get to Austin or Houston, while I'd have liked to visit Dallas I don't think there will be time on this trip, though actually flights into San Antonio are cheapest at the moment.

San Antonio has much to see (all sorts of convenient turistic, historic and cultural attractions plus TexMex, a cuisine of its own, merits debatable, but still enjoyable)), optimal Fall weather (though still between warmish and hotter'n Hell), requires minimal wardrobe, decent hotels in several price ranges (I like the Hotel Havana, sort of "Boutique-y"), and is but about 3.5 hours from College Station up IH35 a piece, then across "Old Texas" on SR21, the old King's Highway and modern "Barbecue Trail". You can plug in Austin easily as part of the trip to/fm CS for football which at Kyle Field is a grand experience, once you get by "all standing". You had better find tickets before you go!

I spent 2 semesters at A&M back in 01/02, so I know all about standing at Kyle Field!

We're planning to visit Austin, San Antonio and College Station - I think copious amounts of bbq and tex mex will be consumed!

Can you fly from the UK to Texas with a "stopover" in CLT? This might be cost effective since US Air flies non-stop from London to CLT, they might allow you to stopover in CLT, then continue your journey to Texas at a later date.