Non-Stop International Flights from RDU (Concord, Dublin: living, airport, rated)
Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, CaryThe Triangle Area
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We drove up to DC about 6 or 7 years ago for a non-stop to London. It was like $2400 cheaper for 4 of us ($700-something each vs $1300-something each). And my sister lives near Dulles and let us park our van at her house. RDU will get its non-stop flights back, but it may be a little while and they may be expensive.
Oh my gosh - I did this too! We stayed overnight on the way there in a Best Western or something like that which offered free airport parking for 2 weeks but on the way home, we landed, and drove straight back to Holly Springs. I would rather fly direct and drive for 5 hours than connect. I flew to London in 2018 and connected thru JFK on the way there (which wasn't terrible) and Boston on the way back. Boston was not fun. It was MILES from the terminal where I landed, to the connecting terminal, and having just gone through immigration etc when I landed, I had to go back through TSA precheck. I came so close to missing my flight back to RDU. All in all, connecting probably only saved me 2 hours of driving time.
We were a family of 5 going to London in 2015 so those savings were well worth driving to Dulles for!!
Countries are starting to put travel bans in place again over the Omicron variant. Japan is pretty much closed to foreigners again... USA, EU, UK, et. are putting bans on certain countries. Depending on how things shake out with this variant over the next 30 - 60 days, the re-start of nonstop international flights may get pushed out even further if summer travel plans start getting canceled. On the flipside, Omicron could turn out to not be that big a deal and everything goes as planned. Anything travel related is very unstable these days.
Yes from your side it helps to have a free parking spot.
Another thing I forgot is customs returning home. Would you rather spend 5 minutes in line at RDU or an hour or longer at IAD? COVID risk with such a densely packed crowd arriving from just about every point on the planet? My point is that we've done both IAD and RDU for our overseas trips, and my threshold for taking RDU is about $2,500 delta. $2,400 gets close but honestly the juice ain't worth the squeeze under most circumstances.
Yet another thing is what if the flight is cancelled or greatly prolonged outbound? You can come home for a bit to relax. IAD, you're screwed. Well in your case you have a relative closeby but other folks are screwed.
Incidentally, all European trips are red-eyes departing from US. All of them. You show me one that is not and I'll humbly admit I'm wrong.
Seriously?? I'm not sure why the onus is on ME to prove you don't know what you're talking about, but here you go:
Here's a link to a Google Flights listing for a $764 roundtrip United/Lufthansa flight leaving Dulles/IAD at 8:25am, arriving in London at 8:55pm, return flight leaving London at 7:45am arriving at IAD at 11am: https://www.google.com/travel/flights/s/kPiU
And this is during COVID times. It was much easier to find daytime flights before the schedules were all messed up, but they are definitely not all redeyes. We, in fact, swore that the next time we flew overseas we would not do a redeye because we slept so poorly on the plane. There are usually quite a few to choose from.
It took us about 30 minutes to get through IAD. There was not a big line, but we had checked a bag, so had to wait for that. (We flew over carryon only.) We did end up getting an Uber to my sister's house to pick up our van because she had flown out of the country.
I think it's fine if you want to spend the extra $$ to fly out of RDU. I know other folks who do, too, but if I can essentially get paid $2400 to drive up through some beautiful country (really, it's very pretty if you go up 29) to Dulles I'll happily do it. I just feel really crappy if I overpay for something. I'd rather take that money and use it once I'm overseas.
There are PLENTY of non Red eye flights that leave from NY - my parents always refused to fly back to the UK on a red eye.
I'd rather fly red eye personally to maximize the time I'm going to have over there and to get onto UK time as quickly as possible.
When I lived in California, I would drive up to SFO instead of SJC which was a little closer. Now that I live in Raleigh, I don't mind connecting in JFK or ATL for international flights.
There are PLENTY of non Red eye flights that leave from NY
AA had one from JFK and BA had one from JFK. It was possible to catch the first AA RDU-JFK flight of the day and connect to the LHR flight, which arrived at 10 pm their time. Prior to the pandemic I took this flight probably 20 times. (I'd rather not fly overnight, either.) But the BA flight from JFK left too early to make a connection from RDU.
Neither AA nor BA has reinstated the eastbound daytime flight. When they might do so is anyone's guess.
DL might have had one from JFK, and I think UA had one from EWR. BA might have had one from EWR also. Don't know whether it was possible to connect to these from RDU.
It was also possible to catch the first AA RDU-ORD flight of the day and connect to AA's daytime ORD-LHR. But it arrived at 11 pm, and depending on how fast you could clear UKVI and HMRC, the trains might have quit running.
Incidentally, all European trips are red-eyes departing from US. All of them. You show me one that is not and I'll humbly admit I'm wrong.
Here's a pro-tip, before you post an absolute like "All" or "always" or "never", check for yourself to see if what you think is true really is. Absolutes are rarely absolute. And in this case it's ridiculous to think that there are no daytime flights to anywhere in Europe. We could go on listing daytime flights from the US to other European cities, too, but I think you get the idea. Major international airports like IAD, JFK, BOS, etc, have a variety of flights at a variety of times.
Here's a pro-tip, before you post an absolute like "All" or "always" or "never", check for yourself to see if what you think is true really is. Absolutes are rarely absolute.
When you goad people to "prove me wrong" on a forum, they often gladly will.
When you goad people to "prove me wrong" on a forum, they often gladly will.
I'd be interested to know about daytime flights from JFK. Is there a way to search an entire airport for flights at a certain time?
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