Flight Route - England/Scotland

When I took the RS 13 day Scotland tour, I flew into Heathrow then took the train to Glasgow. The tour ended in Edinburgh and I took the train back to London. This may not be everyone's cup of tea, however, I wanted to fly direct on Virgin Atlantic and from Dulles there isn't a direct flight to Scotland. I really enjoyed the train journey to Glasgow. The trip from Edinburgh was a different story--a red alert heat warning and a lightning strike on a signal messed things up, but I did eventually make it.

Are you looking at a multi-city journey rather than two one-ways?

Putting random dates in May into Google Flights - into London and out of Glasgow for about £650 (with KLM), which isn't too bad.

I just returned from Scotland about 10 days ago. I am a Delta flier, fly out of Spokane and this time I did Spokane -> Seattle->Amsterdam-> Edinburgh and the reverse. Those flights were Delta, Delta and KLM for the leg to/from Edinburgh.

Last year when I went to Edinburgh I went Spokane ->Atlanta->Edinburgh (Delta all the way) with the return being Edinburgh->Amsterdam-> Salt Lake City -> Spokane (KLM, Delta, Delta). There is one Delta flight a day to/from Spokane/Atlanta and the return flight from Edinburgh to Atlanta did not match up with that departure to Spokane.

I actually like transiting Amsterdam when going to the UK. You do not need to go thru Passport control or Security as you are not entering the Schengen Zone so you just stay in the non-Schengen area of the airport. The transits are super easy.

The only issue for me is that I am strictly carry on only. KLM has a bag dimension which I meet but also has a bag weight (26.5#) which is harder for me to meet. Still, I managed although no one checked on either of the KLM segments.

You might want to look at routing on the Delta website and see if anything looks like it will work for you.

Thanks for the comments. I always appreciate people sharing what they've done and how it worked. I'm going to do some more research, but found the Google Flight listings encouraging.

Be sure to book directly with your airline of choice and not a 3rd party. The 3rd party will not save you any money and will just put a middleman in between you and the airline if there is a problem with your flights. Fares listed on the consolidator websites may not be true up to the minute fares as well.

Since you have a direct PDX-LHR flight, I would book that and take the trains the rest of the way. Since you have a number of longer train journeys, be sure to look at your rail card options: https://www.railcard.co.uk/

I fly multi-city flights a lot and find that it saves me both time and money, usually. It almost always saves me time but not necessarily money. You have to look at the additional costs of train rides going back to your initial arrival airport and time wasted that you could be sightseeing and so on. I think it's definitely a good objective.

And I almost always start with Google Flights, rather than Skyscanner. I think it has good accuracy and is generally pretty in tune with what the airlines are offering.