To go abroad for one day?

I did this three years ago, 5.55am flight to Dubrovnik, we were in the old town having coffee before lunch. Explored all afternoon, took a small boat across the bay to Cavtat, had a swim, back to the old town for an amazing dinner, back to the airport for 10pm flight home. £39.99 return.

Air travel accounts for 2% of global emissions. Also they are among one of the few sectors actively investing in reducing emissions.

To OP, please do check in to let us know how you get on. Enjoy!

It seems crazy that airlines offer these cheap deals

OP is in Scotland. You can fly from Edinburgh to Belfast for £32 return with Easyjet. I can see the attraction, but terrible for the environment

Of course. I don't think anyone fails to understand that for a single trip it's the same.

The problem with extreme day trips is they encourage frequent short trips rather than single long trips, therefore more air travel.

It's a fairly basic concept.

But the demand is there regardless to op so where as you have a point about demand...it's there at this point so no point giving everyone a lecture about the environment. It's not us little ppl that are the issue... tell the wags who take a private flight to where ever they have been traveling to during the euros.

But the carbon cost of individuals doing this a couple of times a year is dwarfed by weekly business travel, flying tat produced in mega factories all over the world, people having children - the annual carbon cost of a monthly return flight to New York is less by far than having even one child, so if people are expected to pay for the carbon cost of flying, they need to also pay the cost of other life choices.

I have no DC, don't buy tat and eat hardly any meat. Even if I fly short haul a few times a year, it's nowhere near that of non flyers who have children.

We went to Benidorm in January and it was a tonic to see the sunshine, lunch in tapas alley, beer on the beach and back home. Do it

@4fingerKitKat totally agree

TBH, I'm surprised how many people are encouraging OP to go for it

If the plane is going anywhere staying for a few days or staying for one makes no additional impact.

You'll get lots of people telling you not to re the travel and environment.

However, I'm going to,visit dd for the weekend. It's not the same day but I'm leaving on a Saturday morning and returning Sunday afternoon, so not much longer.

I'm going to visit dd who will be living in another country for at least a year and I only have a weekend to do it as can't take week days off. So a same day or one night day trip will be more the norm for us for at least the next year or two.

Friend and I did a day trip to Amsterdam for our 30th Birthdays.
It was good fun, but I do remember being really tired most of the day because of the super early start and of course no hotel/apartment to sit down for a couple of hours.

I think an overnighter looks better. We have early morning flights to Copenhagen and early evening ones coming back, so I am thinking of doing a one nighter at some point.

I did it as a sort of dare pre lockdown. Ryanair Stansted to Malaga then 40min train to Fuengirola. Lunch in the main Square, couple of hours on the beach than journey in reverse and home by 9pm. Bought 3 cartons cigs in Fuengirola and 'sold on' to partner for price halfway between what I'd paid and what he used to pay at home - made enough to cover whole trip including wine and lunch. It's a trip I do regularly so just felt like a bus trip tbh and in my late 60s was not at all exhausting. Don't dob me in for selling cigs on!!

I can see why this is tempting I really can but from an environmental perspective it’s kind of grotesque. It’s one thing to fly for a 2 week summer holiday because I don’t really expect people to be such hair-shirt environmentalists that everyone has to forego 2 weeks in the sun (I’ll be flying for my summer holiday this year). But for the most part people seem to be doing these “extreme day trips” just because they can, because it’s cheap, for the sheer hell of it. It’s not as though people are typically choosing to do a day trip instead it’s in addition to other trips. It’s all extra flights.

And it’s a nonsense to say “the flight is going whether I am onboard or not” - you are creating the demand - ok that flight on that particular day will still take off, but long term flights only operate where it’s economic to do so. The person who talked about the environmental impact of producing almond milk earlier - if someone said “if I didn’t drink it, someone else would” - would you accept that argument? It’s exactly the same.

I think there needs to be some massive reform to the way we pay for flying. Someone used the example of using tumble driers earlier so I did some rough maths - a short haul flight emits about as much CO2 as using a tumble drier every day for a year. But using the tumble drier daily could cost £500 and a return short haul flight might be £20? It’s completely insane - we need to pay the carbon cost of flying.

I used to take my class to Rome for the day. 6.30 a.m. Stanstead to Ciampino, airport bus to Termini, bus and driver picked us up - to Forum, Palatine, Colosseum, pizza and gelati on the run, Trajan's column and Market, Pantheon, Piazza Navona/Ara Pacis. Back home for 9.30 p.m. Best fun ever!

I've never been able to find the flights for this. I keep hearing about people doing it so I've looked every now and then. Found nothing cheap.

I did Nice once, it was absolutely knackering but great fun. This thread is making me want to do another one

Probably not. We tend to fly out early morning for holidays, because that's when the flights go and they're nearly always full or only have the odd seat empty.

Same for when the flight comes back. It's rare I've been on a plane that's not full tbh and one of the main reasons I've not done this yet is that I can't find a reasonably priced flight combination (eg under £150 or so return for the day) so the airlines are having no trouble filling flights.

But I think this is mainly a 'London' thing because there's far more choice of flights and airports and public transport to and from these airports actually exists. It's far more possible if you can use at least two airports that have multiple flights per day to many destinations and you can get the train there at 5 am and home again at 11 pm compared with a regional airport where there's one 'out and back' flight a day and you have to drive and park at at minimum cost of £40 because there's no public transport to get you there for the early flights.

But I wouldn't worry about being tired because I'd just sleep on the plane both ways.

It sounds good until I think of the time needed to get to the airport and then wait in queues. That’s half a day really depending on how close you live to an airport.

I've done this before but train to Paris. Got the Eurostar early morning and came back at night. Was very easy to do. I probably wouldn't catch a flight though, having to get there super early and then all the security and possible delays.

The environmental benefit of longer trips is where they reduce the travel of multiple trips. I once did a 2 week interailing around Europe and it was the equivilent of about 6 weekend breaks.

If it's a one-off, you see what you want to see on that trip, it's a moot point. If you return to see more, that's where it's less efficient.

It's the hanging around the airport chunks of the day that would put be off.

Environmental questions aside (I will have flown short haul multiple times this year so no legs to stand on), I think the key things for me would be a) distance to airport - if I had to gey up at 4am to make an 8am flight I would be so tired I couldn't enjoy the day, b) flight time - I'd probably want to keep it under 2-2.5hours to maximise time in the city and c) airport quality/transfer time. I was in Copenhagen the other day and landing on the runway to getting onto the train into town was 25 minutes. That's a complete game changer to somewhere where it's an hour's bus trip and the airport process itself takes another hour to get through passport control.

Geneva also doable.

I would love to do it , my only concern would be the outward flight being delayed.As far as the environment is concerned, before last year , I last flew in 2000!

Do it. I just went to jersey for the day. Super easy. 35 mins from lhr. Day bud pass £9. You can get around the whole island. You can do the same for Lux too. And public transport all free. Frankfurt also doable. The key is looking at the dust and lice from the airport to the centre of town. Good luck

I suspect this probably started as a stealth marketing ploy by airlines to sell the shitty time flights.