I need to travel to London on a Saturday morning, arriving by 9am. I'm close enough to Manchester, Leeds Bradford and Liverpool airports that I could go from any of those. However, the only flights I can find are with BA. Why can't I find more? To *any* of the London airports? It's mad if there aren't any. Any ideas?

Skyscanner.net

Cheers for that.

I'm being offered flights to Heathrow from Leeds Bradford for £1,150.20. That is return though. Via the Isle of Man.

I'm thinking the £94 BA have quoted isn't looking too bad just now. The next nearest is about £170.

Damn Network Rail and their attempts to maintain our railways. Do they think we want to be kept safe on our travels or something?

www.bmi.co.uk or www.bmibaby.co.uk
trains are pretty comfy nowadays and cheap enough www.nationalexpress.co.uk

I would expect you could probably drive to London in the time it would take to fly? Particularly from Rochdale.

http://flightchecker.moneysavingexpert.com/

Cheers. It's www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com if I go from Leeds. www.virgintrains.co.uk if I go from Manchester. I checked them all last night. Trouble is there are works on the line so my journey planning is a bit of a nightmare. When I agreed to teach the weekend in London I expected it to be straightforward enough to get there with a direct rail link from Manchester! Silly me!


It takes about four hours to drive to London from here! There's no way I'm doing that. It takes just two and a half hours by train from Manchester and an hour for me to get into Manchester, park up and catch the train. I'd far rather be on a train where I can sleep, use my laptop, listen to music and phone/text people. Tbh, I'm so tired at the moment that driving that far is the last thing I should be doing, especially as I'd have to leave home at about 3.30am if I was driving and then have to work all day. As I'm counselling in the afternoon, that's not really good practice. I'm driving to Great Yarmouth on Wednesday and back the following Tuesday (holiday with my children and my parents again) and I'm dreading the travelling for that even as that's four hours too. As there's only me going down to London it's a bit wasteful to drive my 1.8 Corolla Verso down there and it'd cost more than it would by train, particularly as I'm headed for Euston so would have congestion and parking charges for city centre. Once I'd chopped off my arm and leg to pay for that I'd be unable to drive home anyway!

Fair dos. The last time I drove to London it took 6 hours. For me to fly it would take me an hour to get to the airport, two hours waiting until the flight, an hour on the flight and then another hour into London at the other end, so I'm only saving an hour by flying.

Two hours though? Can you not just do the half hour check in? Last time I checked for a flight Manchester to Glasgow I could get away with half an hour because of it being an internal flight and taking hand luggage only.

How the heck do you manage to get to London in six hours? Does your car have wings? It takes me four hours to Glasgow and four to London. Dropping one hour from that for going straight through without the M61/M60 diversion I could understand, but TWO hours less? I'm surprised.

Edit because I'm daft: It takes me three and a half hours to Glasgow. But that makes little difference as you're slightly north of Glasgow anyway so would have further to go than that!

Admittedly I was driving through the night so didn't have any traffic to worry about. And I was only driving to Edgware, I got the Tube in from there.

Maybe it's just because I fly with crap airlines that I have to be there two hours before departure

If you can reach Manchester, Leeds Bradford or Liverpool airports, why not just go to Manchester Piccadilly, Leeds, Bradford Forster Square or Liverpool Lime Street?

There's no way you won't get a train to London from at least one of those.

That was the original plan. Driving over to Liverpool for the train would be a pain in the arse. Not only is it further to drive but the train journey is longer when I get there too. Most Bradford-London trains change at Leeds anyway - the only direct train gets me there too late. My preference is the Manchester train but the line has engineering works the day I'm travelling so I can't get to London on time that way. That leaves Leeds, which is now looking like the option I will be taking. With what it's going to end up costing I just wanted to look into flying and was stunned to find that only BA can offer a flight (unless I want to go via the Isle of Man or Jersey and pay upwards of £500) and I can only fly into Gatwick. I just expected there to be more options than that somehow.

Cheers for replies. It was worth looking into other options, but back to plan A. At least I know I *can* get there in time and set up for my class before the parents arrive.