The Travel Bargain

Passengers will have to wait a little longer than expected to fly in the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, after the plane’s manufacturer yesterday (January 16) admitted that the first one would not be in operation until early next year.

The company had previously hoped to fulfil initial orders for new planes before the end of 2008, with Japan’s All Nippon Airways scheduled to receive the Dreamliner first.

However, yesterday’s announcement means the launch of the plane has been put back by a total of ten months from its initial completion date, and Boeing admitted it is now under the spotlight.

“I know our credibility is…being tested on this program, and it is up to us to deliver on what we say we will do,” Scott Carson, chief executive of the company’s commercial airplane division, told The Associated Press.

Several UK airlines have placed orders for the new jet, with British Airways set to receive 24 planes in 2010 and Virgin Atlantic expecting 15.

First Choice told The Scotsman that it was still waiting to find out the impact of the news on its delivery date for 2009, while Flyglobespan chairman Tom Dalyrmple told the newspaper that they were already prepared for the possibility of delays to their Dreamliner order.

“We deliberately chose a 2010 delivery date rather than be a launch customer in case there were any early delays, and we have so far had no indications from Boeing of any delays to our planes.”

Book by January 31: Air Canada is offering discounted fares to a range of US destinations from London Heathrow.

The sale fares are for outward travel in January, February and April, with all fares below including taxes.

London Heathrow to:
Atlanta from £301
Baltimore from £285
Boston from £285
Chicago from £315
Dallas Fort Worth from £331
Denver from £345
Detroit from £315
Houston from £320
La Guardia from £255
Los Angeles from £315
Miami from £315
Newark from £255
Orlando from £321
Philadelphia from £285
San Francisco from £315
Tampa from £321
Washington from £285

The fares permit a minimum stay of one Saturday night and a maximum stopover of one month. Charges may be applied for weekend travel and for refunds or changes to flight arrangements.

Berlin has two main airports: Tegel (TXL) and Schönefeld (SXF). Low-cost carriers generally arrive at Schönefeld to the south of Berlin while full-service airlines land at Tegel, very conveniently located in the northern suburbs of the former West Berlin. Ground transportation is well organized with reasonably priced trains and bus services to the center of Berlin.
Cheap Flights from London to Berlin (TXL) on Low-Cost Airline Air Berlin

German budget airline Air Berlin flies to Berlin Tegel (TXL) three times per day from London Stansted (STN). Connecting flights are available via London-Stansted up to twice a day from Belfast (BHD), Glasgow (GLA), and Manchester Airport (MAN).

Air Berlin is often rated the best low-cost carrier in Europe, partly for offering many services generally associated with full-service airlines for free. In contrast to many British and Irish low-cost carriers, Air Berlin still serves free drinks and snacks on most flights and allows 20 kg checked luggage for free (30 kg if a return flight longer than 28 days is booked). Most sports equipment is carried without surcharge. Seats are allocated at check in or can be reserved at time of booking for a fee. Children under 12 pay 67 per cent of adult fares. Guaranteed connecting flights can be booked on many routes.

In contrast to the other low-cost carriers flying from the UK or Ireland to Berlin, Air Berlin flights arrive like full-service carriers at the more convenient Berlin Tegel Airport (TXL) rather than at Berlin Schönefeld Airport (SXF).
Cheap Flights from the UK and Ireland to Berlin (SXF) on Low-Cost Airline Easyjet

British budget airline Easyjet has the largest number of flights from the UK and Ireland to Berlin Schönefeld Airport (SXF). Easyjet flies to Berlin, unless otherwise noted daily, from Belfast (BFS) (3 to 4 times per week), Bristol (BRS), Glasgow (GLA), Liverpool (LVL), London-Gatwick (LGW) (up to twice daily), and London-Luton (LTN) (up to three times daily).
Cheap Flights from the UK and Ireland to Berlin (SXF) on Low-Cost Airline Ryanair

Irish budget airline Ryanair flies to Berlin Schönefeld Airport (SXF) daily from Dublin (DUB) and East Midlands (EMA), and twice daily from London-Stansted (STN).
Cheap Flights from Manchester Airport to Berlin (SXF) on Low-Cost Airline Jet2com

British budget airline Jet2 flies daily to Berlin Schönefeld Airport (SXF) from Manchester Airport (MAN).
Cheap Flights from Ireland to Berlin (SXF) on Low-Cost Airline Aer Lingus

Irish airline Aer Lingus flies to Berlin Schönefeld (SXF) daily from Dublin (DUB) and four times per week from Cork (ORK). Connecting flights are available to New York (JFK) and Boston (BOS).
Non-Stop Flights from London (LCY) to Berlin (TXL) on Lufthansa

German full-service carrier Lufthansa flies from Berlin Tegel (TXL) to London City Airport (LCY) up to twice daily. These flights are operated for Lufthansa by Eurowings.
Non-Stop Flights from London (LHR) to Berlin (TXL) on British Airways

Full-service carrier British Airways flies up to six times daily non-stop to Berlin Tegel (TXL) from London-Heathrow (LHR).

* The center of Berlin can easily be reached on public transportation from both Tegel and Schönefeld. Berlin is a good location to go upmarket on hotels – the supply of luxury hotel rooms in Berlin generally exceeds demand. Many hotel reservation agencies can find great deals. Further savings are available by touring Berlin’s top sites on public double-decker bus lines 100 and 200 – both the prices and routes are hard to beat.

Since when does it cost less to fly to London from Seattle in June than it does in April?

Since competition starting heating up on the route with the announcement last month that Northwest Airlines would begin nonstop service on June 1.

The Minneapolis-based airline is kick-starting bookings with a $667 round-trip fare, including taxes, for June travel dates between Seattle and London’s Heathrow Airport. Tickets must be purchased by January 22. Currently only British Airways flies nonstop between Seattle and Heathrow.

The fare, available on Northwest’s Web site today (www.nwa.com) undercut fares quoted by British and most other airlines by nearly half for the start of the peak travel season. A quick search on www.kayak.com, a site that searches multiple airlines and online booking agents, showed fares of $1,300-$1,400 on other airlines for June dates, including a $1,444 British Airways fare.

The low fare won’t last for long though. Northwest was quoting $1,196 for its London nonstop in July.

Northwest announced in December that it would add new nonstops between London and Seattle, Detroit and Minneapolis, welcome news for London-bound travelers who have become annoyed with British Airways’ service problems, including lost luggage and flight delays in and out of Heathrow. A class-action suit filed in Seattle earlier this year alleges that the airline has lost hundreds of thousands of bags this year — some of them permanently. A new terminal is due to open at Heathrow in late March in the spring which should alleviate some of the congestion.

Airline-industry watchers say U.S. and foreign carriers are jockeying for position in anticipation of competition heating up when a European “Open Skies” agreement takes effect in March. That pact will allow more U.S. carriers to use Heathrow, British Airways’ base, and allow Europe-based airlines to fly to more U.S. cities.

Northwest’s Seattle flight, on an Airbus A330 plane, will leave at 10:05 p.m. (10:55 p.m. on Fridays) and arrive the next day at 4:15 p.m. (5:05 p.m. on Fridays). The return flight will leave London at 6:30 p.m. and arrive at 8:55 p.m. in Seattle on the same day.

The flight will join five other daily European nonstops to and from Sea-Tac: British Airways to London, Northwest Airlines to Amsterdam, SAS to Copenhagen, Air France to Paris, and starting March 30, Lufthansa to Frankfurt.

Arriving to London flat broke because all your hard earned money went to airline tickets would certainly be a let down — a rather unfortunate way to start your London vacation. So, before you book your trip, let’s take a look at how to find cheap flights to London.

Finding Cheap Flights to London Online

The days of having to rely on a travel agent to find the best fares for your next flight to London are long gone. Replacing the travel agent is the cyber agent — an efficient, hard-working and easy to use application composed of binary data and HTML code. Additionally, the cyber agent never sleeps or takes a coffee break and there are hundreds to choose from!

When you go online and start searching, you’ll probably find the best fares to London if you’re flexible. This means checking more than one online ticket broker in order to find cheap tickets to London. If you’re fairly content with the first results of your online search, chances are it will only get better form there. Even if it’s only cheaper by a couple dollars, it’s certainly worth the surfing. And don’t forget that the ease of the Internet and the user-friendly pages for these online brokers make it simple to conduct a simultaneous search on several airlines, even other travel sites.

Cheap Low Season Flights to London

As with any travel destination, you are more likely to find cheap flights to London by planning a visit during a time when tourism is normally low. The airlines must lower prices in order to attract travelers who might not normally visit London during these times. The odds are that you’ll be able to find a fare that pleases you.

One downside to visiting on a London vacation during the off-season is that some of the tourist-oriented attractions or events might not be open or might have less accommodating hours of operation. But if this is not of extreme importance to you, an off-season flight to London may just be the right call.

So when is the low season? Airlines offer the cheapest fares to London during November and the first half of December, and then again from the first of January to the beginning of March. Around mid-March, airlines slowly start raising their prices again as summer approaches. If you’re concerned about the weather, and don’t feel that you want to be in London when it’s cold and wet, remember that London is located on, well, an island — and it is often cold and wet, regardless of the season.

In addition to thinking things through properly and not rushing your purchase, paying attention to these two tips should help you to find cheap flights to London without too much hassle or unnecessary stress.

Flight planning is the process of producing a flight plan to describe a proposed aircraft flight. It involves two safety-critical aspects: fuel calculation, to ensure that the aircraft can safely reach the destination, and compliance with air traffic control requirements, to minimise the risk of mid-air collision. In addition, planners normally wish to minimise flight cost by appropriate choice of route, height, and speed, and by loading the minimum necessary fuel on board.

Flight planning requires accurate weather forecasts so that fuel consumption calculations can account for the fuel consumption effects of head or tail winds and air temperature. Safety regulations require aircraft to carry fuel beyond the minimum needed to fly from origin to destination, allowing for unforeseen circumstances or for diversion to another airport if the planned destination becomes unavailable. Furthermore, under the supervision of air traffic control, aircraft flying in controlled airspace must follow predetermined routes known as airways, even if such routes are not as economical as a more direct flight. Within these airways, aircraft must maintain flight levels, specified altitudes usually separated vertically by 1000 or 2000 feet (305 or 610 m), depending on the route being flown and the direction of travel. When aircraft with only two engines are flying across oceans, they have to satisfy extra safety rules to ensure that such aircraft can reach some emergency airport if one engine fails (See ETOPS).

Producing an accurate optimised flight plan requires a large number of calculations (millions), so commercial flight planning systems make extensive use of computers (an approximate unoptimised flight plan can be done by hand in an hour or so, but more allowance must be made for unforeseen circumstances). Some commercial airlines have their own internal flight planning system, while others employ the services of external planners.

A licensed flight dispatcher or Flight Operations Officer is required by law to carry out flight planning and flight watch tasks in many commercial operating environments, e.g. US FAR §121, Canadian regulations. These regulations vary by country but more and more countries require their airline operators to employ such personnel.

London has five main airports – Heathrow in the west, Gatwick to the south, City in the East, Stansted to the north-east and Luton to the north. Of these, Luton and Stansted are the main ones utilised by the budget airlines offering cheap flights.

Easyjet from London Gatwick Airport

However, this may be about to change. Low cost carrier Easyjet appears to be making a major investment into its services from London Gatwick Airport, if the new routes it has just announced are anything to go by. This is good news for those living in the South-East of England that want to take city breaks across Europe; the struggle across London to Stansted or Luton can be annoyingly time-consuming. It’s also useful for those in European cities wishing to visit London – more competition usually means lower prices.

Inner London with 7 million people, consists of 13 districts : Camden, City, Hackney, Hammersmith & Fulham and Haringey, Islington, Kensington & Chelsea, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth, and Westminster.For those visitors wanting to do the “tourist thing”, the question is often Where do I stay?

Firstly let’s be objective. Inner London for the tourist or shopper is a relatively small place stretching from Hammersmith in the west, to the City in the east; Hampstead in the North, and Westminster in the South. With a few exceptions the visitor will want to stay north of the River Thames.

If you wish to go to a London hotel page by district then go to our London hotels by district section.

There are 5 general areas for you to stay:

1. The West End
- Including popular tourist destinations Park Lane, Mayfair, Soho, Bloomsbury, Covent Garden and Theatreland.
2. South of Hyde Park
- Including Kensington, Chelsea, Earl’s Court and Knightsbridge.
3. North of Hyde Park
- Including Bayswater, Paddington and Marylebone.
4. Westminster and nearby Victoria.
5. The City, generally more suitable for business travellers needing proximity to London’s financial district.

In terms of price, the West End is the most expensive followed by the City, Kensington and then Bayswater. The reason is accessibility, although hotels in the West End are more expensive they offer fast accessibility to most attractions such as Soho, Theatreland and Oxford Street. Kensington which is roughly 1 or 2 miles south east of the West End has the museums and the Exhibition centres of Earls Court and Olympia and has a ten minute underground service in to the West End. Hotels in this area tend to be generally of a higher standard than in Bayswater which is a vast expanse of budget and tourist class hotels with good and bad areas in terms of the general condition and amenities of the area. However the western part of Bayswater offers an easy 15 minute walk to Oxford St. and Notting Hill. The Westminster and Victoria area is a real mixture with Westminster having the Houses of Parliament and 4 and 5 star hotels and Victoria having the Station and a mass of bed and breakfasts so you pay your money and you take your choice!

London Areas : The West End
For the tourist, unless it’s museums you are looking for then the first choice of location must be the West End, budget permitting. A stay here in “Zone 1″ of the London underground will enable fast access to many locations including Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Buckingham Palace, Oxford Street and Regent Street / Bond Street shopping, Carnaby Street, Madame Tussauds, Soho, Theatreland and of course Park Lane and Mayfair. Staying in this area will enable most of these to be accessed on foot saving time and money on travel.

Hotels in the West End range from mid-tourist to deluxe standard. Most tourist stays extends over a weekend so there are many hotels which offer discounted weekend breaks, usually with tax and breakfast included. Be sure to check our London Hotel Offers pages for more deals.
Hotels in the West End

Mayfair & Park Lane : Luxury London Hotels
There are a dozen or so 5 star luxury world famous London hotels. Generally speaking these are concentrated around Mayfair / Park Lane area. Rates usually start at around £200 per night.

London Areas : South of Hyde Park
Here we have Knightsbridge, Kensington, South Kensington and Earl’s Court. Knightsbridge is a shoppers and diners paradise with many world famous locations including Harrods. The area is generally very up market and borders onto Mayfair (Park Lane 5 minutes walk) and Chelsea (with King’s Road only 5 minutes walk) and is within a ten minute walk of the Kensington museums. Many repeat visitors have a preference for this area with its calmer atmosphere and more sophisticated environment yet accessing the West End in minutes by underground, foot or taxi. Kensington High Street is a mile long road of shops, stores and restaurants and pubs and has a very colourful presence in the evenings.

The south of this area around Gloucester Road and Earl’s Court offers direct access to most London areas via the underground stations. South Kensington is again quite up market and is a mixture of up market residential and 3 to 4 star hotels. A good safe area to stay in and easily accessible from London Heathrow Airport. Earl’s Court just to the east of it is slightly more down market but adequately safe to visit and stay in. Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre dominates the skyline.

London Areas : North of Hyde Park
This large area bordering the north edge of Hyde park is a mixture of residential and commercial properties with many 2 and 3 star hotels. Now subject to regeneration we are seeing the birth of designer type small hotels of a great 3 and 4 star status. Generally speaking this is this is the only other area where we would recommend the tourist to stay in Central London.

With many hotels, all in competition with each other, rates tend to be competitive in this area. Bayswater holds the greatest concentration of budget and tourist accommodations and you can usually find a cheap London hotel easily.

Notable locations in this area include Marble Arch, the north border of Hyde Park, Lancaster Gate and Whitley’s Shopping Centre. Oxford Street is within 15 minutes on foot or 10 minutes by underground or taxi and you can walk across Hyde Park to Kensington High Street Shops and restaurants.

Hotels may vary in standard and quality and we recommend that you set your nightly budget above the £35-40 mark. In saying that, there are some great places to stay in this area and at great prices too! Check the 3 star Blakemore Hotel or 4 boutique 4 star Caesar hotel for some excellent deals.

London Areas : Victoria & Westminster
Many visitors to London like to stay in the Westminster/Victoria area, because of the proximity to the Gatwick Express and national rail links that operate from London Victoria station. The area is also convenient for the London Eye and Buckingham Palace. There are a few 3 star tourist hotels in the area, but many more budget bed and breakfasts. We have a few up market 4+ star hotels, whose rates tend to be suitable for those who require a greater level of luxury and quality whilst staying in this particular area.

Westminster is home to some of the tourist’s ideal sights, like Big Ben, Westminster Cathedral, or the London Eye, and so many 3 star hotels’ availability run out fast. The tourist travelling on a limited budget it may be more appropriate to stay in one of the other areas mentioned and taking advantage of the London Underground.

London Areas: The City
The City area of London is classed as the Eastern side of the City Centre. Often referred to by its postal codes of EC1 or EC2, this area is usually frequented by business and corporate travellers, visiting one of the many offices and companies in the area.

The City offers many higher class hotels, with prices catering more to those using company credit cards to finance their London visit. However, you can get some very good bargains at the St. Gregory Hotel and 196 Bishopsgate Apartments in this area, when these four star properties fall into the 2 star price range!

Offering easy access to any area of the city centre, this area is served by a wider range of tube lines and also has access to the Docklands Light Railway which gives visitors a quick and reliable link into Docklands, Excel and Canary Wharf. The City’s tube connections offer direct links to Euston Station, King’s Cross Station, Liverpool Street Station, Paddington Station, Victoria Station, Waterloo Station and London City Airport, making all areas of Central and Greater London extremely accessible as well as all of London’s airports.
London City - Aldgate East Area, London
London City - Aldgate East Area
- Photograph © Hotel-Assist.com Ltd

Perfect for business or leisure guests travelling via any London Airport, the City area also keeps many of London’s Treasures. Tower Bridge, London’s Roman Wall, HMS Belfast, Old Spitalfields Market, St. Katharine’s Dock, St. Paul’s Cathedral and also the Tower Of London.

Usually extremely busy during conferences in the City or Docklands areas, the City borders Farringdon, Kings Cross and The West End and is just a hop, skip and a jump across the Thames from Southwark and Bermondsey, offering almost an infinite choice of accommodation when hotels are to full capacity in the City.