Who flys direct to Orlando / Sanford

[Mr G]

Paid £489.00 with Virgin Atklantic. Direct flights this year, Man to MCO, departed early July return early August. I recommend reegular checking as there are deals to be had.

[gail and david roberts]

We went in May this year , for 19 days
manchester to Orlando
I waited until January to book our Flights and got them for £425 each , this was using my Virgin credit card points and cash
Virgin do have a sale in January

[gail and david roberts]

Just seen this ad on my face book page , virgin have a sale on now until the 26th September ,
but nothing for May next years sorry
Here is the link http://virg.co/AugSale

[Dads_Taxi]

Paul,
to answer your question, Thomson and Monarch also fly direct from MAN. They don't fly every day, for instance only Monarch was available to us as we could only fly on a Saturday. That was in May of this year.

As a guide to prices for the Spring school holidays this year - Monarch were £720, Virgin £890 and all the airlines offering indirect flights were between £650 and £670. I couldn't get a price for Thomson as they didn't offer a Saturday flight.

The moral to this story is - don't go in school holidays! (like I have to)

[PAUL GIZZI]

Thanks for this Delta works out at £470 for the dates we need, do delta have seatback tv? and food / drinks included?

And 6 of us going

Cheers

[Conrad]

Cool, I was coming in here to start the exact same thread. So to summarise, the only airlines who fly direct to MCO from the UK are Virgin, Thomson and Monarch?

I have visited The States countless times and I only ever fly in-direct due to cost. I returned from Vegas Tuesday just gone and we saved £350 each on flights by changing at Philly. The only problem is when we go FL next May we will be taking our new baby and family we are going with have young kids too and refuse to change flights.

So for me, this time around, direct flights are the only option but personally I think £600 is quite expensive for a direct flight to Orlando. You'd think there would be a little more competition from other airlines, surely Orlando is one of the top destinations from the Uk and more than 3 airlines would operate direct routes there??

[caroline]

Cool, I was coming in here to start the exact same thread. So to summarise, the only airlines who fly direct to MCO from the UK are Virgin, Thomson and Monarch?

I have visited The States countless times and I only ever fly in-direct due to cost. I returned from Vegas Tuesday just gone and we saved £350 each on flights by changing at Philly. The only problem is when we go FL next May we will be taking our new baby and family we are going with have young kids too and refuse to change flights.

So for me, this time around, direct flights are the only option but personally I think £600 is quite expensive for a direct flight to Orlando. You'd think there would be a little more competition from other airlines, surely Orlando is one of the top destinations from the Uk and more than 3 airlines would operate direct routes there??

Hi Conrad, Thomson and Monarch don't fly into MCO they fly into Sanford - Virgin and British Airways fly direct to MCO and BA also fly direct to Tampa.

[Dads_Taxi]

Hi Conrad, Thomson and Monarch don't fly into MCO they fly into Sanford - Virgin and British Airways fly direct to MCO and BA also fly direct to Tampa.

I think this thread is becoming confusing - it certainly threw me a bit.
Paul's original query was about flights from Manchester to the Orlando area.


Conrad's query only asked about flights from the UK, and Caroline's response is to Conrad's question. BA do not fly direct to Orlando or Tampa from Manchester. I was briefly confused, if not slightly hopeful, that maybe more options were open to us Mancunians!
I just thought I'd comment in case anyone else was as dozy as me.

[Katys Grandad]

So for me, this time around, direct flights are the only option but personally I think £600 is quite expensive for a direct flight to Orlando. You'd think there would be a little more competition from other airlines, surely Orlando is one of the top destinations from the Uk and more than 3 airlines would operate direct routes there??

I think the reason is that it isn't a route that attracts enough premium passengers who will pay high fares for First & Business Class tickets and that's where the major airlines make the real money. BA do offer Club to MCO and Tampa but not on the 747's preferred by high payers and no airline flies First Class to either destination. Virgin's Upper Class comes close but isn't a full First Class product.

There's no doubt that Virgin exploit their Manchester-MCO scheduled carrier monopoly (who can blame them?) and no other airline has ever challenged that.

[Dads_Taxi]

I think it was 1994 when we went with Delta. Food and drink was plentiful and seat-back entertainment was science fiction!
I seem to recall the luggage allowance back then was 2 items of any size - if you could carry it, it was OK.

Hopefully someone will have a more recent experience to report back.