Coming back to New York - finally :)

[glennstewart]

Hi All,

It's been a long time since my last trip to New York:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/iXRCjJsXyIeg3CJha7WA?feat=directlink

I'm coming back. Last time the main purpose of my trip was work in London (SYD-SIN-LHR). My short trip was LHR-JFK and back for the week or so I was there. The majority of my time was spent in Europe.

This time I am coming from a different angle. I'm travelling from SYD-LAX (Qantas A380 flight for the heck of it). The main reason for my trip is to spend time with family in Canada. But I intend to head back to New York and hope to do another catch up with you all.

I have a couple of questions that I know many of you would be able to assist with:

1. Cheapest way to travel multi-leg around the US?
So far I've found fairly good prices on Travelocity, Expedia and the like. JetBlue seems to have some decent prices as well. The key will be getting to VYR at the end of the trip.

2. Cheapest way to travel from JFK-LHR (or at least Dublin)
I can possibly use Qantas FF points. It's the way I did it last time, but seems like a waste of points when taxes are so high. Looking at prices so far, the flights outright are proving to be more expensive that my SYD-LAX return flight (flights to/from LAX/SFO/JFK-SYD are very cheap at the moment).

3. Recommended US cities
If you were to travel for a few weeks around the US, where would you go? There doesn't need to be an emphasis on aviation either.

Hoping to hear from you all. I know I'm asking the experts here :)

[Big Tim #70]

Boston, Miami, Chicago, New Orleans to name a few must see cities.

As far as inexpensive airlines, Jet Blue is my favorite but Southwest is pretty decent too. Southwest if pretty "No Frill" though and often flys to the smaller airports.

[Iberia A340-600]

I'd recommend taking a look at Aer Lingus for flights from JFK to LHR. I purchased a r/t ticket a few weeks ago for JFK-SNN-LHR, MAD-DUB-JFK and the JFK-SNN-LHR leg was only $205 o/w.

As far as US cities go I'd recommend visiting Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, and Washington D.C.

For YVR Cathay Pacific normally offers pretty cheap fares for their YVR-JFK-YVR route on the 777-300ER.

[sporky]

The key will be getting to VYR at the end of the trip.

One option is to fly into Seattle. The train is actually a good option for traveling to YVR. The trip is 3.5 - 4 hours and only costs $35.

Jetblue offers decent fares from SEA to JFK, right now in the neighborhood of $109-179 one way (non-stop). And Virgin America is also offering decent fares, but with a stop in SFO for $109-119 one way.

-Tad

Newbie to the site, but not my love of planes!

[T-Bird76]

Glen shop around for fares, the U.S airlines now are all fairly the same as far as prices go. Just remember your going to pay to check your first bag.

As for cities....San Francisco, Boston, Washington D.C, Santa Barbra C.A, Portland Oregon...just to name a few.

[MarkLawrence]

Just remember your going to pay to check your first bag.

Not on all airlines Tom - Southwest doesn't charge for the first bag and neither does jetBlue.

[jerslice]

One option is to fly into Seattle. The train is actually a good option for traveling to YVR. The trip is 3.5 - 4 hours and only costs $35.

The train only runs certain times of day - other times it's by bus. Be careful.

Cities to travel to - Boston!! (surprise surprise from me), DC, San Francisco, Seattle if the weather is good.

[glennstewart]

Thanks for all of your suggestions. I was putting together the itinerary and noted how little time I actually had once I put the Dublin hop into the mix. I have done the trip before, but as I said in reverse.

I've decided I can't stop in Chicago this time around. I'm going to be stopping in Boston for a couple of days and flying from there.

Finally this time around Qantas has decided not to penalise for using AA over BA (it used to be 30,000 points instead of 25,000). So for my BOS-LHR-JFK flights I've used about 50,000 points and no more than $200 for taxes. A fair deal I think in the end (still quite a lot of point seats available - esp on AA).

So far the dates go something like this:


Flight Date Origin City From Date Destination City To TZ From TZ To TZ Hour Flight Time
QF11 17/07/2009 13:05 Sydney SYD 17/07/2009 9:45 Los Angeles LAX 10 -7 -17 13:40:00
VX350 21/07/2009 8:30 San Francisco SFO 21/07/2009 17:20 Boston BOS -7 -4 3 5:50:00
AA108 23/07/2009 19:10 Boston BOS 24/07/2009 6:50 London LHR -4 1 5 6:40:00
BD133 24/07/2009 21:45 London LHR 24/07/2009 23:05 Dublin DUB 1 1 0 1:20:00
BD132 26/07/2009 20:35 Dublin DUB 26/07/2009 21:55 London LHR 1 1 0 1:20:00
AA107 30/07/2009 18:30 London LHR 30/07/2009 21:20 New York JFK 1 -4 -5 7:50:00
XX 3/08/2009 16:00 New York JFK 3/08/2009 ??:?? Vancouver YVR -4 -7 -3 10:00:00
???
QF12 17/08/2009 22:30 Los Angeles LAX 19/08/2009 6:15 Sydney SYD -7 10 17 14:45:00


I can't help but want to spend some extra time in New York :)

But with airline tickets the way they're going, I'll be back again without an issue.
Still can't believe that London-Sydney return is only USD $600 (including taxes) at the moment - complete crazy.
The current price from New York to Sydney return including taxes is barely more than USD $700.

The airlines are really doing it tough!
We haven't hit a recession here in Australia yet (heck only this time last year the IMF in New York said we were recession proof - they were wrong).

Two days ago Qantas "axed" 1650 jobs - so I know tough times are ahead. So I'll take advantage of the cheap flights while I can :)