Los Angeles to Bordeaux via London: need advise on selecting London-Bordeaux flights
 

My wife and I are splitting our vacation between Bordeaux (first) and England (second), so we purchased a round trip to London, hoping to then just separately purchase a London to Bordeaux flight. To our horror, we discovered though that there are not many good flight options to fly to Bordeaux from London, especially if one is landing at Heathrow as we are.

We are landing on Sunday at Heathrow at 10:10 am and here are our three options LON-BOD options. We are concerned that the first two options will not give us sufficient time but the third option is quite inconvenient. Any advise will be greatly appreciated!

Option 1 –11:50 out of Heathrow with a short stop in Paris. This is the best option but is one hour forty minutes enough to go through immigration and then go to another terminal?

Option 2 – 1:50 direct out of Gatwick. Same concern about having enough time for everything

Option 3 – 3:50 out of Heathrow with a longer stop in Paris so we will only get to BOD at 10:20, meaning out entire trip will be 20+ hours


Thanks

>>Option 1 –11:50 out of Heathrow with a short stop in Paris. This is the best option but is one hour forty minutes enough to go through immigration and then go to another terminal?<<

Not on separate tickets

>>Option 2 – 1:50 direct out of Gatwick. Same concern about having enough time for everything<<

Nope

>>Option 3 – 3:50 out of Heathrow with a longer stop in Paris so we will only get to BOD at 10:20, meaning out entire trip will be 20+ hours<<

This is the only reasonable choice of those three options.

But another equally awful option would be to cross London to St Pancras and take an afternoon Eurostar to Paris Nord, than a 2.5 to 3 hour train from Saint Lazare to Bordeaux


••• Which is why open jaw is usually a much better idea -- in this case in to Paris and home from London •••

I would do an open jaw flight LAX > BOD with one stop and return LHR > LAX nonstop. May be worth the change fee to do that. Least amount of flight time going over is just under 14 hours.

If you can't change your flights, how about spending a night in Paris, reached either by plane or train, and going on to Bordeaux by train the next morning? You are liable to be dealing with jet lag the first day in any case.

And janisj is right about the flights.

>>how about spending a night in Paris,<<

. . . Or even in London so you don't have to worry about unprotected flight connections.

Apparently, they have not bought their LON > BOR tickets. Depending on the change fee, I would rebook the outbound flight. Why waste a night where they don't want to be?

>>Why waste a night where they don't want to be?<<

Depends on the change fees + new fare cost difference. Could be hundreds of $$/££/€€ pp.

I agree with Janisj. A reminder to get one's ducks all set up when planning a trip before committing to nonrefundable flights or accommodations. Flights from the west coast are often cheapest in/out of London but unless one wants to stop in London for a bit the connections from LHR to the rest of Europe are not often the best. Its why we often fly to some place like Paris, Frankfurt or Munich before connecting to other destinations in Europe. Cheapest fares often involve London so we often stop in London on the return to the US for a few days. Since we like London a lot it is always a pleasure.

There is usually a better choice of flights out of the other "London" airports (I have real trouble seeing Luton as a London airport, lol). I would take the National Express coach to Gatwick. Since it looks like the Bordeaux flights leave late or early I would spend the night in my usual B&B - B&B near Gatwick | Free Parking | Springwood Guest House - and eat dinner in a nearby pub. One trip I felt energetic enough to spend the afternoon visiting Arundel castle, and you could certainly take the train to London for the afternoon and evening - the station is walking distance from the B&B, which provides transport to/from the airport.

There are many ways to look at this.These are just samples
1. All train route via London St. Pancras International to Paris then to Bordeaux as mentioned above. Once you get to St. Pancras, it is 5.5 hours total to Bordeaux.
2. Fly to CDG, then CDG to Bordeaux by train either direct or via Paris. You will get to Bordeaux several hours before your option 3.
3. Fly to TLS, then TGV to Bordeaux. You arrive about the same time as via CDG.
4. Fly via other European city, e.g. 1:45pm on Swissair via ZRH, arriving BOD around 7pm. Not cheap.

I think I would choose option 2 from Greg. I would book the Heathrow to Toulouse leaving at 2pm (about 100$). Then train from Toulouse to Bordeaux. (2 hrs).

Or you could add an unexpected stop in your itinerary. (Paris for example).

Or you could chance a Gatwick connection (knowing that if you miss it, you need a plan B like taking the train down to Bordeaux for example).