Anyone got any tips on booking flights to Canada?

[GatherlyGal]

Planning a trip in the summer to see family in Toronto and flights are eye-watering! Over £1k each without any luggage! Bad news for a family of 5.

We are in the north so London not ideal but we'd travel down if it saved a few £100s.

Anyone booked flights recently and got any ideas? I'm going to Air Canada and can't see any alternative.

Presumably you'd need to drive back into the US to fly home and return the hire car.

Don’t know if you got something sorted OP but I can see direct flights from Manchester to Toronto in the £600’s during August via Air Transat right now on Skyscanner.

Thanks @Spanglybangles ! Actually booked 2 weeks ago at that price. Flying Manchester to Toronto so no connections or long road trips required.

Excellent! Have a great trip! We fly to Vancouver in 2.5 weeks….can’t wait! 😁

Have a fabulous time. I love Vancouver. Shame Canada is so huge you can't do both sides in one trip.

My brother recently visited from Toronto and flew to Dublin then Birmingham with Aer Lingus. The stop over added a couple of hours to the journey but he said the whole experience was way better than Air Canada. He's also gone via Iceland with Westjet (stopped over for one night) and saved a huge amount of money even with the Icelandic hotel factored in. It used to be generally cheaper to fly Canada to UK and back for some reason than the other way but you should get something cheaper than £1k per person.

Sorry @GatherlyGal - just seen your latest update! Have a fab holiday!

We got flights to Calgary for £600 each for October 2022 with Air Canada. We booked in November 2021 though. I think you have to book well in advance to get a good price

Transat, out of Gatwick, are significantly cheaper than BA/AC.

We went to Toronto last May and ended up on Air Canada. We wanted Heathrow. AC was much better value than BA.

I think you need to look up prices on all the dates that work for you.

If you clear immigration in the USA, and then move onto Canada, the initial clearance covers you for the 90 days validity of the VW, which means you are waved through when you return to the US.

If you want to visit both countries, definitely fly in and out of the USA.

It's a long drive from New York or Boston - how about going via Detroit? Just over 230 miles, which you could easily do in a day.

Thanks for all the comments but we’ve now booked direct flights. They came down quite a bit at the start of the month.

Brilliant - what a relief for you.

Do you have onward plans?

If you are heading downtown, I can recommend the UP (Union station/Pearson) train. It heads downtown with a couple of major stops.