rbnwdln

Well, I may have to go the route of taking the major carrier to London or Paris and then use one of these guys to get to Venice. Either that or I book Aeroflot through Outer Slobovia with a 15 hour layover in the Boonies or Tulies to get from New York to Venice for a decent price. SO how does one do the, say, Air France-Ryanair booking? Can you book the intraEuropean airlines online? Do you call? It makes me REALLY nervous to try and book 2 flights on 2 different airlines that I have coordinated....Help!
Thanks!

gertie3751

Just go to the websites of Ryanair or Easyjet and follow the instructions!
www.ryanair.com
www.easyjet.com
Very straightforward. Look at your arrival day/time in London or wherever and work out a departure day/time on Ryanair/Easyjet. You don't book an Air France-Ryanair flight, you book them totally separately.

AAFrequentFlyer

Just book it on line. No problem with that part.

Just so you know:

1. EasyJet or RyanAir are low cost carriers. They do not have any interline agreement(s) with any other airline(s). You will not be able to check in, have your luggage checked in for both flights at the originating point.

2. Both airlines are point to point airlines. If you need to do a connecting flights with either one, and even though it's the same airline, i.e. EasyJet, London-Amsterdam-Madrid, you would need to check in with EasyJet in London and again in Amsterdam, and you would also need to pick up your luggage and re-check it again.

3. Both airlines have a very strict check in rule and luggage weight rules. As a matter of fact I believe RyanAir will start or already started charging for ANY checked in luggage. You need to be checked in no later than 30 or 45 minutes before the SCHEDULED departure time, regardless if the flight is on time or not. Being in check in line before the cut off check in time DOES NOT COUNT. You need to have the BPs before the cut off time. Make sure you read their T&Cs on their respective websites. If you miss the check in cut off time, you loose. No ifs or buts. I believe EasyJet started to offer "insurance" just for such a possibility, but again "READ THE T&Cs" before you commit.

Other than that, they are not bad, they operate mostly new and very clean planes. They sell drinks and snacks during flights. No assigned seats. First come, first served.

Have a great trip!

travelatte

We flew BA last summer to London Heathrow and took Easy Jet to Venice. It was fine, and very inexpensive. We did have to switch from Heathrow to Gatwick. We chose EasyJet over Ryanair because they flew into Marco Polo airport Venice. Ryan flew into another airport about 1 hour away.

Just book online, its very easy.

Travelatte

mom04

travelatte,
how hard was it to change airports(heathrow-gatwick)? How did you do it?
How long did it take and how much did it cost?

tropo

On our 2nd last trip to the UK, we rented a car in London, drove around various parts of England & Scotland, then dropped off the car at Stansted airport, then took a Ryan Air flight to Cork, picked up another rental (already booked on the internet), then drove around Ireland, then later flew back to Stansted Airport, then caught the express train to london, and back into a London B&B. In other words we had no problems during the complete holiday, all transfers went smoothly. No problems with booking Ryan Airways over the internet, and as others have said, you have to watch you luggage weight, and booking in procedures.
On our last trip we booked Excel airlines and went for a weeks holiday on the green island of Samos, again, smooth operation and the savings were quite considerable when compared with the major airlines.
P.S. We always allow a few hours "waiting time" between flights & connecting flights.

WillTravel

My suggestion for transferring from Heathrow to Gatwick:
Go to the Central Bus Station at Heathrow and catch the National Express bus to Gatwick.
Here is the schedule:
http://www.nationalexpress.com
Of course there's the possibility of being delayed in traffic. This will cost about 20 pounds per person.

There are other methods that combine train plus tube plus train, or tube plus train. These will probably cost a little more, but you may be able to organize a great deal.

TimS

National Express (www.nationalexpress.com) has direct coach service between Heathrow and Gatwick. The cost is 18 GBP. The scheduled time varies between 65 and 75 minutes. However, heavy traffic can make it a lot longer. Allow five hours (or more) between your scheduled arrival at one airport and your scheduled departure from the other. Besides traffic, you may have to contend with a late arrival or a delay getting through customs.

TimS

rbnwdln - If you can fly directly to Gatwick, you won't have to transfer between airports and, as travelatte said, you can fly easyJet to Venice and land at Marco Polo.

travelatte

The transfer to Gatwick was easy just follow the advice of Willtravel and TimS. We had a rather long layover at Gatwick, but only on that leg of the trip. If you can fly into Gatwick that would be great and save time. We had an enormous delay arriving at Heathrow for customs, but we were not in a time crunch, so it did not cause any problems. The trip between the airports was a little over an hour. It is easy, we travelled with our 2 kids, 6y and 9y and it was smooth. You may want to check Easyjet out of Paris, that may open up more options and not have to do the transfer thing. We did stay in London on our return for 3 nights. I don't think we could have made the connections b/w airports and still make the flight back to the US. We love London, but factor that in $ if you are tossed up between Paris, London or another stop. London is pricey. Check out Dublin, flights may be cheaper from NY and you could probably use easyjet to Venice. www.whichbudget.com is a great site for the budget airlines.

Travelatte

dutyfree

Delta flies nonstop out of JFk or Atlanta (seasonally) to Venice. Were they considered?

Andrew

I flew Portland to London last fall on Northwest on a cheap fare, on to Prague from Gatwick same day and back from Budapest. I was lucky that inbound flight was into Gatwick - I probably wouldn't have done it otherwise. Northwest and Delta fly into Gatwick, and even some American flights (from Dallas I think) fly into Gatwick now.

In my case I had only a 2:40 layover in Gatwick if my incoming flight was on time; I could have taken a much later flight to Prague but I wasn't sure if my flight into Gatwick would be on time. I actually waited until I got to Detroit (my NW connecting city) and made sure we were going to leave on time before I booked the easyJet flight to Prague from my laptop(!). Because I was booking last-minute, my fare wasn't that great, but the whole trip was last-minute.

I had to spend at least one night in London on the way back so I made it two, but that was actually a nice bonus of flying the way I did. It probably didn't save me much money flying this way vs. flying directly to Eastern Europe, but I got the London stop-over basically for free. It worked out well and I would mostly do it the same way next time.

Andrew

dhoffman

Most of the responses have right on. I would suggest a couple of websites to look over. www.skyscanner.net (or .com) I can't recall and www.whichbudget.com

Both can give you info about lowcost carriers.