To avoid expensive London airfares.........

Where would you be flying from? What's your definition of rather expensive?

How much savings are you talking about? Unless it is significant, it rarely makes sense to fly to another airport when you want to go to London. You might save money on a connecting flight. Last year, I ended up flying on Icelandair because it was significantly cheaper on my route flying back from London. I usually combine London with another city in Europe and I've generally found that it is cheaper to fly into London and home from the other city than vice-versa.

To expand on Laura's post: There is a large exit tax for flights that leave from London. This is not applied to through-flights. You won't see it on an open-jaws into London and home from elsewhere, but you would see it on the reverse, and on round-trips to and from London. BA's site lets you call up an excellent breakdown of all the various fees for tickets, you will see it as "Air Passenger Duty" or such. If you play with various ticketing possibilities where you do not fly out of London (or fly through London) as opposed to flying to and from London, you will see where this tax (over $100) doe sand does not get applied.

We just booked a flight into/out of Dublin (leaving from Newark, March/April 2015), and I'm currently looking at airfares to/from London, since we want to stay there for a few days, too. Depending on the time of day, airfares to/from London are as low as $60. The Newark-Dublin R/T airfare was $615, so if you add another $120-ish for the London leg, that's only $735 ... which is still quite a bit cheaper than the current Newark-London R/T fares (about $900). So Dublin might be an option for you.

As a test, I used itasoftware.com to get a rough idea of trans-Atlantic fares in February from the major gateway of Atlanta. Prices to London, Paris, Amsterdam and Manchester fell within a $100 span. Yes, Heathrow was the most expensive, but not by enough to justify the Internet's frequent blame of high taxes or surcharges. Passengers only see the bottom line which includes these costs, even at Heathrow, unless flying on points where American/BA do show their stiff extra charges. Such objections rarely are applied elsewhere. Toronto, for instance, imposes a relatively high landing fee yet Air Canada has been selling trans-Atlantic flights for several hundred dollars less than the American carriers.

If you're flying through Chicago, Aer Lingus into Dublin and a budget air carrier into London area might be your least expensive way of getting there.

London's high long haul airport departure taxes are often offset by that it's an extremely competitive airfare market and the airlines are willing to keep margins low on routes into the region.

Their short haul departure taxes are generally not bad, and if you want a deal, it generally involves using one of the few long haul LCCs trying to establish themselves in the USA (Norwegian, Wow!, etc.) and connecting through Oslo or something. This is provided you can get to the LCC's departure city for a reasonable cost.

Atlanta is generally not the best test city for cheap transatlantic fares because it's an effective Sky Team monopoly and doesn't really have an international LCC presence. (Orlando is actually better in that regard because the Europeans are looking for their cheaper Disney + beach Florida vacations.)

Marble,

"expensive" is relative. also, travel in general isn't inexpensive.

why london? Why not some place else less "expensive"? Once you get there depending on where you want to stay, that can be 'expensive" too.

Just something to think about. You can try flying into some other airport like Leeds-Bradford (LBA) and take the train into London. but then theres the cost (time & $$$) to get into London. you can look into that yourself to see if you like the cost in both time & $$$. I took that train an its about a 4+ hour ride.

or you can look at flying into Amsterdam (AMS) and see how those prices fit your wallet. Then again, theres the issue of getting into London. you can do the train from AMS to London, but again, it will cost you time & $$$.

or you can try Edinburgh (EDI) and see how those prices are. again, you will probably have to get into london and train is an option and again, the train is about a 4 hour ride. you will need to look at the cost.

Sometimes it just best to "buy once, cry once" and call it good. Many people find things expensive, but have no problem spending a lot of $$$ on a pet, car/truck/boat/plane, clothes, purses, significant others.

good luck and happy trails.