mollyjar

A friend of mine who has never flown before has to fly to Maine to work for the summer. He has the great luck of living in the center of NC and can fly out of Raleigh, Greensboro, or Charlotte. His travel budget for the job is $300. So far he and I have only been able to find flights for about $350-400. We've checked STA, expedia and the other discount sites, and the airline sights. Is it still so early that the cheapest fares aren't out yet or has he missed the boat? In other words, should he just bite the bullet and shell out some extra money or wait and see? I know fares can be unpredictable and may go up or down, but do you think he has a shot at something better? Also, is there an alternative flying into Portland?

rkkwan

Southwest (WN) flies to Manchester, NH. It's about 1.5 hours drive (95 miles) to Portland.

Your friend doesn't need to fly Southwest, but he may get a good price to Manchester because other airlines have to compete there.

rkkwan

Looking at www.iflyswa.com, RDU-MHT's full fare is $140 each way, and cheapest possible is $88 each way; and R/T is about $210-252 with advanced purchase. One stop, or switch planes at BWI, which you probably need to do with most airlines anyways from NC to Portland.

So, definitely cheaper than the $350-400 you're finding. Since even the refundable fullfare is only $280, your friend may want to just purchase the Southwest flight first, and then get a refund if he sees a cheaper flight direct into Portland.

Sandra_NH

US Air has non-stop service between Charlotte NC and Manchester NH

The lowest fare is $250 for travel on Tues/Wed/Thurs shown for the rest of the year.

Go to usairways.com and select travel between CLT and MHT by price, not by date. This will show you all the options available.

The drive to Portland is 100 miles, Rt 101 construction is now completed and a fully divided highway through to I-95.

Cassandra

I don't see Manchester as the good trade-off because he'd have to rent a car to get to Portland and the time it would take would exceed the time lost in flying a 2-leg direct route to Portland.

If he can spring the added 30-50 bucks, I'd recommend the United/USAir connections through Dulles -- most direct.

But there may be one other alternative: there's express bus service between Portland and Boston's Logan airport that costs around $21 OW and $37 RT. If he can get a bargain RT fare between RDU and Boston (which is much much more likely than to Portland), it may be the cheapest option, although I believe the bus trip will take about 3 hours (correct me if I'm wrong on that one.) There's also a train, and whether he takes the train or the bus, he'll have to figure in the taxi fare from Portland airport to the terminal, but it can't be that much.