ealeon25

Hello everyone,

I have a little bit of a dilemma:

I am planning a trip to Toledo, Spain this year from 12/2-12/16. We depart from Newark Friday at 835pm and arrive into Madrid at 935am Saturday 12/3. I have decided I would like to take a 2 day trip to Paris while there so I'm thinking about booking a flight from Madrid into Paris the same day we get there, 12/3. I found a 2:50pm and 3:30pm flight online but then got to thinking (as I do).... what is the weather like in the NJ/NYC area in December? And what are my chances that my flight is delayed so much that I miss my Paris flight even though I am giving myself 5-6 hours between flights?

This is my first international flight so I really have no idea how common delays are out of Newark in December. And changing the flight to Madrid isn't really an option since the tickets have been purchased.

Thanks in advance for all your input!

DebbieDoesDulles

First thing I'd do is call United just to see how much it would be to change your Newark tickets to go into Paris instead of Madrid. Tickets to Paris are usually less than into Madrid, so even once you add a "change fee", it might not be too much more to change your current tickets than it would be to buy a separate ticket onward to Paris.

And it would be nice not to have to worry about making that connection/scheduling enough time...not to mention you'd have 5 or 6 extra hours in Paris.

DebitNM

If you have to do a RT Madrid to Paris [which is what you are thinking] why not do it at the tail end of trip? Your departure wouldn't be in jeopardy and you could spend your 2 days without jetlag [which is going to make Paris at the beginning not much fun] and you would also get a full 2 days as you could go early in the morning.

I would however, be sure to fly back to Madrid a full day ahead of departure back to US to avoid any issues on that end of trip.I would not fly the day of your departure to Madrid. I am guessing you probably have an early morning flight to US, so maybe same day flights isn't even possible.

Spend your last night in Madrid for 1 more night of tapas!

nytraveler

It's hard to provide a lot of perspective without knowing the shape of the entire trip. How many days do you have altogether? Where else will you be going in Spain and for how long? How much time are you allowing your self in Paris? Are you just cutting the time from Madrid? Are you eliminating another city completely? Or just stuffing more cities into the same number of days?

There is no way I would do as your are planning. My first step would be to find the cost of changing the flight to into Paris and then home from Madrid. Would that really be much more than adding the costs of a RT Madrid-Paris to what you are paying now?

Going directly would make the beginning of your trip much easier, would cut down the chance of delayed luggage, would avoid the anxiety of not making you flight to Paris and would give you more time in Paris - which is very limited.

My second choice would be to put Paris at the end of the trip - so ay delays/luggage delay will be at the end of the trip when you are headed home.

As to flights out of EWR in Dec - there is usually not snow on the ground that early in Dec - but no guarantees. But a much bigger question is where are you coming from? And how likely is that flight to be late getting into EWR. Is this a single ticket and is your luggage checked through? How much time do you have to change flights in EWR. (There are a lot of late flights into EWR and it's more likely as the day goes on - so that is the first thing you have to consider.)

IMDonehere

Why not fly into Madrid and leave from Paris? If that combo is not that expensive.

And you will be bleary eyed with such a late day on arrival, so I would do it in any case.

Newark is either 1 or 2 in travel delays in the US.

There are scores of trains and buses from Madrid to Toledo daily and for the fun of it, take the AVE, high speed train.

Christina

I agree it would have made more sense to have planned the trip that way and bought an open-jaw ticket. But I gather this was an afterthought and so one can't so easily change the tickets now without a lot of cost.

You usually can, in fact, change tickets with a change fee of about $200, and the difference in itineraries. I would at least check that option out to see what the cost would be. This is far in advance so I wouldn't think the ticket part would be that different. The change fee shouldn't be a whole lot more than a cheap airfare. I presume you are taking that 2:30 pm Easyjet flight which should cost about 101 euro RT. If you could change your original ticket for only about $200, I'd do that.

I gather you are flying United. I don't know what you paid but right now you can actually get a cheaper ticket flying into CDG and leaving from MAD than you can for a RT MAD from EWR, both ways nonstop. I don't know why you couldn't change your tickets. It isn't a lot cheaper but right now it is about $30 cheaper to fly into Paris. If they will do it for a change fee of $200, I would, but I wouldn't if they want a $400 change fee.

Bottom line, I would say the weather in December is not nearly as likely to be bad enough to cause flight problems as it could be in January or February. But anything can happen, but it isn't common at all that there are ice/snow storms in early December. Even very heavy rain for house can cause a flight delay, I know it has happened to me, a visiblity problem as I recall.

Personally, when I go to two cities like that, I also prefer to get the more complicated one out of the way at the beginning of the trip. Because at the end of the trip, I just want to go home the easiest way possible. At the beginning, the first day is kind of ruined anyway. But you are wasting a lot of time by allowing for a 5-6 hr layover in Madrid due to not booking this on the same ticket. No way I'd do that. But I don't think there is a big chance you will miss that Paris flight. There is always some chance.