Seeking help from well traveled friends. Shocked by $1,800 cost of flying San Diego (San) to Brittany, France - Optiosn include: Lorient (LRT), Brest (BES) and Nantes (NTE) - in order of convenience preference. One complication we are hoping to avoid is that most connections require a change of airports (either Paris CDG to Orly (ORY) or London Heathrow to London City or others.) This is not practical as we'll be traveling with three kids. We've also looked at SAN-CDG and then taking the TGV out to Lorient (LRT), but this adds expense (about the same as flight) and 6 hours (not very fast TGV - again about the same as flight with lay-overs) and makes for a huge pain on return as we will have to come back a day early to CDG requiring a hotel stay and baggage lugging back and forth. Any advice on inter Euro cities that might help us get to LRT, BES, or NTE without airport change. Any advice on sub $1,500 tickets to PAR - ORY or CDG? Preferred flights out 6/22 - 7/20
(I know Saturday travel and that we can save more going during the week, I just haven't seen options that are more than 20-$30 difference, which is just under my switching point.) Thank you.
Posted by
New York, NY, USA
11294 posts
Have you looked at www.kayak.com? And have you looked at flying into Rennes? I just had a quick look, and Rennes does get flights from CDG. But, it costs even more than the tickets you found, and you still have several hours on the train to get to Lorient. To find what airlines fly to each airport, and from what cities, a good place to start is an airport's Wikipedia entry (a trick I learned on this Helpline). Of course, you then have to check if it's still accurate. There just may not be many options for you - kind of like flying to Nantucket or Kalamazoo (for example) in the US. Small cities like the ones you are looking at aren't going to get flights from a large number of airports. And when there aren't many flight options, the lack of competition keeps fares high. Sorry.
Posted by
OP
San Diego, CA
3 posts
Harold - good thinking on Rennes, but I think in the end that you are right....there just ain't no easy way gettin' there from here. (Yes, tried Kayak, CheapoAir and 2 or 3 European equivalents.)
Posted by
Used to be Steilacoom, now it’s Las Vegas
2297 posts
I've been watching fare trends for the last year and Saturday travel doesn't seem to have the stigma it once did. Sunday seems to be universally higher, but Saturday frequently isn't. That said, it sounds like you're on top of it where time, trouble & cost collide.