Costs of flying from US to Newfoundland
 

I'd greatly appreciate hearing from anyone who flew to Newfoundland from the US last summer which airline you used; what you paid for the flight; how far in advance you reserved; and how pleased you were with your arrangements. We're going next summer and thinking about when to make our move. Specifically we want to fly into St. John's and out from Deer Lake (seems to cost the same as the simple round trip to St. Johns) from Kansas City but I'd be interested in any U.S. points of departure. Thanks very much.

best bet is to try expedia

James,

One thought would be to fly KC to Toronto on whichever of United /Air Canada or American is cheaper, then fly Toronto to St. John's on Canjet, one of Canada's economy air carriers that provides service to St. John's and Deer Lake from Toronto.

Air Canada generally runs one non-stop daily from MCI to Toronto, and has a codeshare partnership with United. Check out the Air Canada website for their 'Tango' fares which can be quite good and offer the convenience of using a single carrier all the way through.

Do you have any Nfld questions? It's one of my favourite places anywhere!

Jerry

The problem with using Canjet is that, so far as I know, as a budget airline it does not have interline agreements with other airlines. This means that you would have to check in separately in Toronto, including your baggage. It also means that if there are delays on one airline, you would be out of luck with the other. If you were planning to stay over in Toronto that would not be so much of a problem, but could mean more than a minor inconvenience if you were not.

I believe that Canjet flies directly to Newfoundland from New York (LaGuardia), but I don't know whether that would help you or not. You would still have the same interline problem.

I think Air Canada is the best bet here. AC is the only airline that serves both your origin and destination. If something goes wrong and a conection is missed they will get you to your destination somehow. Their web site, aircanada.com, is easy to figure out.

When to buy is the eternal question. I normally buy as soon as I know my itinerary as long as the fares don't seem out of line. That said I was recently on an AC flight to London booked months ago when I met a passenger who had booked the day before and paid a bit less than me.

Enjoy Newfoundland, it's a great place.

As a (now) resident of Western Newfoundland and living here in Corner Brook(which is about 40 minutes from Deer Lake airport) for 4 months now, I am very interested in your proposed trip.Do come back to this forum when you are looking for more specifics!

Hi James,
I'm also planning a trip to Newfoundland from the US for next summer. There seems to be no competition to Newfoundland from the US, which means that the airfare is fairly constant and high. I've been keeping an eye on the fare from Atlanta to St. John's and it has been consistently around $700 (no matter what dates I put in the search engine -February or July). Good luck finding a decent fare; from what I understand (this will be my first trip to Newfoundland), it will be worth it whatever you end up paying to get there!

I appreciate everyone's comments and would still be interested in hearing from anyone who has actually made the trip. Regardless, my experience is just like Kendra's...a range of roughly $770-$830 from Kansas City regardless of when.
Kendra, for what it's worth, the best car rental deals I've found so far are from Budget. Taxes on car rentals are very high and 100 km (yeah, km) per day is the standard mileage allowance. My wife and I will clearly spend more on a car than we will on flights.

JamesL

We have flown from Philadelphia to St. John's twice. Both times we ended up taking AC. Both times I monitored the prices from many, many months. And both times we flew for less than $400 US. The first time (3 years ago) we flew for around $250 RT each. I booked it in perhaps March/April for a July trip. I thought that might have been a mistake fare in that I haven't seen it close to that again. This past September we flew for around $390 RT each and I booked that in late July/early August. I found the best rates by going directly to Air Canada's website and found that Wed/Thurs were the best days. The low prices are only posted for a day or so (and both times Travelocity, Expedia, etc. did not have them), so you need to know your dates and act immediately. The risk of waiting is probably small in that if you cannot snag a low rate you can just pay the higher rate at a closer date. Continental Airlines has a nonstop daily from Newark to St. John's. You may be able to do something with that as far as connections. I was a bit nervous about it even though it is a quicker flight because there is only 1 a day. My experience it is easier to change flights in Toronto than Montreal. For a rental car you may want to look at Enterprise. It is not at the airport, but you can take a cab to it. They seem to have pretty good prices and lots of specials and sometimes you can get a car without a per km rate. As far as the airport rentals, we have found that Avis (or perhaps it was Hertz) has the lowest per km rate (for a compact car) which can make a huge difference if you are driving across the island. You may want to look into picking up a subscription to Downhome(r) magazine. It has ads for local car rentals, etc., which may help with your planning. Rental cars can be hard to come by if you wait, so I would suggest you don't wait to long for that.

Hope this helps some.

Kathy

Hi James L:

My son, now living in Vermont, flys home to Newfoundland several times a year. He finds it easier to drive from Vermont to Toronto or Montreal leave the car and catch a flight home. Very cheap in some cases $59 -$99 CDN one way. An option if you want to explore a little of mainland Canada before coming to the best kept secret in North America IMHO.

For those of you further south I'd check the stopover cities (its usually, Toronto, Montreal or Ottawa, sometimes Boston) and I've done this on the Air Canada, West Jet and Can Jet sites,is to book from your departure airport to Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal and then book from there to St. John's, Deer Lake, etc. We did this from Orlando last year and it was dirt cheap like $450 CDN RT. Also a few years ago Continential (wonder if they are still in business) was flying in and out of Boston and points in Florida during the summer months here.

Enjoy and "long may your big jib draw".

Denise