best air route san diego to san jose
 

We are a family of nine that will be traveling to CR at Christmas. Three family members will be traveling from San Diego. The rest of us are coming from Boston. I'd like some advice from San Diego travelers who have flown to SJO in the past. I'm coming up with very long flight times, and strange airlines. Obviously there will be a connecting flight. What city is it best to connect through? We'd like to have everyone in San Jose by 2;30 so we can head out to our rental. This doesn't seem to be a problem for the east coast. Would love to hear from San Diego travelers.

What airlines are you describing as "strange"? Living in San Diego puts you in easy reach of Tijuana's airport, which is easy to reach by just crossing the border. Mexican airlines Aeromexico, Interjet, and Volaris all fly to San Jose with connections in Mexico City. I can't address the connection times at MEX.

If you look at a map, you see that CR is directly south of Florida. California is a long way west, and that's why flight times are longer.

Thanks Jeff. I guess I should have said unfamiliar. The ones you names are some of the ones I did see. More familiar with American, Jet Blue, Alaska , united. Have you flown any of the companies you mentioned? I don't want to chose something similar to "Spirit".

We always fly United through Houston so you could check that option if you wanted to go with something familiar. It's about a three hour flight from IAH to SJO.

I've flown Interjet within Mexico. I thought it was perfectly fine.

Getting to San Jose by 2:30 might be unrealistic from the west coast.

We flew TACA, a United partner at the time, from SFO to San Jose, with a short stop over in San Salvador. The flight left at 1 am and we arrived around 10 am.

I think Taca is now called Copa

Delta has direct flights out of LAX, might be worth the drive for a less than 6 hour direct flight.

Taca is now part of Avianca.