I agree that this itin would present itself as something VERY hard to remove from appearing as (at best) "trying to get a 1 days visa free visit to the UK".
However, just since the point has arisen, surely an airline that is asymmetrically known (i.e. is popular and well known at one end, but unheard of at the other) is one of the more common areas where discount fares crop up?

I've certainly picked up plenty of cheap deals in scenarios where:

- it is the first rotation on a route in the season, so the first return sector (departing from the less popular country) is likely to be very empty (no returning customers yet).
or booking last minute where:
- the previous outbound flight from the origin country has already happened, so they know how many people they have to bring home on the next flight return flight - which could still be in a weeks time, etc.

Admittedly the internet has helped clear these kind of things fast, but historically it has been a lucrative area as their only real market at other end would be expats, etc. I'm sure it still lucrative for bargain hunters in some markets.


However, just to repeat though, I think we ALL are agreed the OPs journey is very hard to present plausibly.
Although I'm not saying it isn't plausible, lots of us do wacky things.
But personally I would never risk this.

Somewhat off-topic, but...:

What's your definition of "recent"? It was called London Luton in 1976! (My first-ever flight... remember it well!)

It decided to call itself "Luton International Airport" for a while (the logo with the swoosh) but reverted to "London Luton Airport" last year, with a blocky new logo.

I can recall some branding switch over that I felt made the London bit far more prominent than previously around the 2000 era.

At the start of the internet era, I can certainly remember it coming up as "Luton Airport" in some systems, until a big push. That might have been around the same time.

BD used to fly to Amristar, via Almaty I think. But that link is long gone.

FlyBE will start ABZ-FAE (Aberdeen-Faroe Islands) in a few months, and Altantic Airways flies EDI-FAE. There's no FAE-LON route (atm)...not really relevant to the OP though

Thanks everyone for your help!

As many of you guessed, we chose this routing because the direct flight US-MAN was significantly cheaper than any other US-Europe options. We have plans to meet up with some friends traveling to the EU, and there's more flexibility flying out of London vs. Manchester.

It seems that the consensus that the US-MAN-LON-EU routing would raise suspicion about the "reasonable-ness" of routing. I found a routing that would allow us depart MAN in the evening around 7-8 hours after we arrive into MAN. On the way back, our options are either to fly into MAN the night before or arrive in the morning just under 3 hours before our US flight is scheduled to depart in the morning. Does this seem to be a reasonable journey that should allow us to "Transit Without Visa" and enter the U.K. for both the layover and a possible overnight?

As noted upthread, the issue is more about the check in agent at the first point deciding whether to accept you for the flight who will be working from TIMTIC data, not the immigration agent on arrival in the UK who can make a judgement call.

I don't think you can remain airside at MAN overnight, which further complicates matters, so I would be taking the same day connection and just hoping it's not foggy!

I believe that Transit Without Visa would entitle us to cross U.K. border control?

It seems from the U.K.'s "Check if you need a Visa" questionnaire that "Transit Without Visa" is in lieu of "Visitor in Transit visa":
https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa/y/c...where_else/yes

Otherwise there's the "Direct Airside Transit visa" for remaining airside with a different set of exemptions:
https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa/y/c...ewhere_else/no