Fly direct or fly indirect and have an extra night?

[erplock]

Flying long haul. Live half way between Heathrow and Bristol airport so can go to either.

We can fly direct from Heathrow for £500. Total air travel time 8h 15m.
We can fly indirect from Bristol for £350. The flight is via Paris. Total air travel time incl the connection, 10h 40m.

Two of us flying. So the £150 each would pay for an extra night's hotel.

What would you do?

Direct.
Just to save the hassle of extra transport to/from hotel and the hassle of packing to be able to access stuff for the stop over.

Direct. Avoid the risk of missed connections.

Depends if you want a night in Paris!

I flew longhaul from Cardiff via Amsterdam and it was so much better than going to Heathrow. Depending how easy Bristol is you might just save the money and go from there!

No no, it's not a night in Paris. It's connecting in 2 hours onto the next flight. Leaves from the same terminal.

Is the cost of parking/taxi the same at both airports?

Would book the direct flight and particularly so if the connecting flight leaves from CDG airport.

CDG is horrendous for connecting flights. I’d go direct

we flew to the Maldives from bhx via Istanbul earlier in the year. Connecting flight was delayed and we had hours at Istanbul.

in feb we are going to Thailand and have decided to do a direct Heathrow to Bangkok flight to avoid having to connect somewhere. I found this to be really stressful and would only consider a connecting airport now if I planned to do a proper stopover with a couple of days to possibly sight see.

CDG airport has a mass of issues both ground based and in terms of air traffic delays. If your inbound flight arrives late you will have even less time to make the second flight.

I would avoid CDG at all costs.
Direct flights are preferable if you have a sensible choice.

Never connect in CDG. Never. I fly somewhere every few weeks and I don't think I have ever managed to have a smooth connection and get my luggage when I have been to CDG.

What about via Amsterdam then?

If you do decide to connect, Amsterdam is generally much better.

KLM through Schipol is ok.
I'd still fly direct.

I've recently flown indirect via CDG outbound & AMS inbound. No other options for the journeys.
No problems at either, just the sheer annoyance at adding many hours onto already very long flights.
I'd go direct, whatever the cost.

For the sake of 150 quid I'd always take the non-stop/direct..doing that removes a lot of hassle and potentially a lot of risk.

If you're not on a connected booking (and a lot of the LoCos don't do connections) then if the Bristol-Paris flight runs late your long haul sector is in jeopardy and you have no come back on either airline. Even if it is a connected booking there's still a lot of hassle generated if you "miss".

I agree with the pps upthread that there are potential difficulties in connecting through CDG, even intra terminal.