Are there some foreign cities that are cheaper to fly onto? With taxes and fees Heathrow is so expensive.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Actually, there is no city cheaper than London to fly into as there are absolutely no taxes or fees associated with London [b]arrivals[/i].

Departures, however, are another matter entirely.

Actually, it is rather expensive to fly into London. The same plane that flies into London is going to have to fly out, and the airline is going to distribute the cost of the taxes incurred by the departing flight over all passengers in both directions.

But to answer the question, many European cities are cheaper to fly into than London.

w/o knowing where you want to visit, its hard to think of answers.....

some going to the uk go to bru & train to london....

where do you want to end up?.....where will you start/return...

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

If you book award travel from the U.S. to LON using AA miles on AA, or DL miles on DL, or Star Alliance miles on UA or US, you'll pay just a few dollars for flying into London; do an open-jaw redemption to fly back from some other European country, and you may also encounter (relatively) low fees, depending on the country and/or the class of service. I think Spain has relatively low departure taxes, for example.

If we're talking about cash tickets, that may or may not be a different story.

You might want to look at Dublin or Belfast for flights either back to the U.S. or continuing on to Europe then via either of the above on the return flight. Much less then the UK APD from LHR or any other U.K. airports.

bj-21.

That is one of the most uninformed posts I have read in a while on FT.

You can fly cheaply into LHR/LGW and out of BRU/BCN/AMS for example and not pay the horrendous Her Majesty taxes. This is generally known as an open jaw ticket. Very common, very legal.

It is all a matter of base fares and fare rules.

Of course you can. If you know how to work the system, you can always find deals.

What I was saying is that London is, overall, an expensive airport for both departures and arrivals. I just did a quick search comparing LAX-LHR and LAX-FRA fares for one-way travel, and LHR is around $100 more expensive even though FRA is further away. There are no UK departure taxes involved in a one-way trip, so this can't be blamed on taxes.

i want to do this. into lhr, out of bcn on an openjaw. how do i get to bcn for free? can i fly iad-lhr-bcn-iad with a week layover in london for the same price as iad-lhr-iad? i sort of like the idea of that trip.

also, for some reason when using miles, LH for example charges about $500pp more as i recall for iad-europe, that ua does not charge.

From the US, Dublin yes - Belfast no. Flights to Dublin (Shannon too) can be ridiculously cheap, particularly in winter. I flew nonstop JFK-DUB on Aer Lingus in February for about $430 r/t. There's a fair bit of competition on that route, and EI is sort of positioned these days as a low-cost carrier, so you can often find very good deals if you're flexible. US also services those airports and has very economical international fares, so that helps as well.

Belfast, on the other hand, only has one flight to the US - a United nonstop to EWR. It's usually far more expensive than the other airports in Ireland. I'm going the week after Thanksgiving and was lucky to find a seat for <$700 r/t on that flight.

Even from London, I think it's much cheaper to fly to DUB than either Belfast airport. Frankly, I don't think there's a whole lot of tourist demand for Northern Ireland. You go there either because work sends you or because you're going to see family, and the demand for that type of market is relatively inelastic.

I know it applies to a very limited set of flights but I do believe arriving in LCY incurs an airport arrival user fee but there's actually no airport departure user fee (though PD still applies).

Despite what Fenians may wish for, BFS is still in the U.K.! Perhaps you mean SNN.

I'm sure the poster means BFS as the direct flight to EWR has an exemption from APD.

On a recent trip, the Eurostar ticket to Brussels (which is also honored on the train from Brussels Midi station to the airport), purchased in advance, was about GBP40. I believe the APD from London to the US is GBP65 in coach and GBP130 in all other classes, including many premium coach seats. So the savings is either GBP25 or 90, plus (in my case) the cost of the Heathrow Express, another GBP18.

The actual fare from BRU was also a little cheaper than the fare from LHR. I believe it may be because airport fees, which are in addition to the APD, are less expensive at BRU.