Travel to Belgium best way?
 

We anticipate traveling to Belgium (Brussels) twice a year for the next 3 years to visit family. We are looking for the most economical way to travel. We have considered flights into London or Paris using the Euro rail for the last leg. Any Thoughts?

Hi HH,

Brussels (BRU) is an airline hub.

Have you looked up rates direct?

Have you looked at flying into AMS?

((I))

Since your dates are flexible (I assume), you are in the best possible situation to find some bargains. Every carrier I know of has a choice on their availability page that asks whether you want specific dates or the lowest price. Between two and three months before each trip, see who has the best fares to London, Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. Then figure out how much it will cost to get from those off-points to your relatives' house, and make your comparison.

I think that you should think about flying to BRU directly. Don't think that it'd necessarily be cheaper if you fly into LHR or CDG or AMS especially when train costs are factored in. AMS is about four hours away by train. I'd give that a pass. CDG is the closest airport to Brussels of the three.

A few weeks ago, I bought JFK/BRU/CDG/JFK for a little over $400 for traveling this weekend. You would think that LHR would be the cheapest, but American was offering NYC/LHR roundtrip for $1700 for that weekend. No thanks.

Oops -- sorry.

AMS is about 2.5 hours away by train. So I guess that's possible. I probably have to travel from AMS to Paris this weekend, so my mind was momentarily confused.

Sorry about that.

We often found flights in and out of Dusseldorf significantly cheaper than flights in and out of Brussels. (Amsterdam can be cheaper too. Paris is usually, but not always, more expensive.) Of course you have to get from Dusseldorf to Brussels and back...if there are several of you, renting a car would be a good value (but you don't say how long you plan to be in Belgium during your trips).

Other possibilities include flying into Ireland and catching a RyanAir flight, but make sure you are traveling light for that. And RyanAir flies in to Charleroi, not Brussels.

Which airlines fly to Dusseldorf and how much time is needed to travel between the two?

Most of the majors--American, British Air, Lufthansa (of course), Austrian, etc. will fly into Dusseldorf, although the flights may not be direct. Forgot to add that flights also were cheaper to and from Eindhoven or Cologne/Aachen (both closer to Brussels than Dusseldorf). For the Eindhoven or Cologne/Aachen flights, you would have to change planes, usually in London (we often found that flying BA from Dusseldorf via London to a US city--Chicago, for example--was MUCH cheaper than starting directly in London--flying that route in November saved over $1000 on a business class flight to/from Chicago). There are direct flights to Dusseldorf from the U.S., but I don't know Ms. Hall's starting point.
Flying to and from Brussels directly is, of course the "best way" overall and the price differences between BRU and a cheaper airport might not be that great and might not be cost-effective if time is limited. It will take a few hours to drive or train from D-dorf. Since we were living in Brussels, the extra transit time didn't matter. However, if we had been under a time crunch, we probably would have just flown from/to BRU directly.

Yes, it'd be good if the original poster could tell us where she's flying from. I was thinking the same thing, and the experts here can give better information when the details are more complete.