The first direct flights from Bristol Airport to the USA in years have been announced, and you can book a return ticket for as little as £200. Passengers can now fly with travel agent Tui from the North Somerset airport directly to Melbourne Orlando International Airport in Florida.
It marks the first time Bristolians have been able to fly straight to the USA in many years, since direct flights from the airport to New York were cancelled in the 2010s when they became economically unviable. And holiday booking website Skyscanner shows that although there are not many flights scheduled currently, the costs on certain dates are relatively cheap for a long-haul flight.
If you were to fly out on May 18 and return on May 25, it could cost just £201 return, correct as of this morning (May 13). And a trip in the summer months, from June 8-15, would cost you exactly the same. Tui's website is showing the same prices as Skyscanner at the time of writing.
Read more: First direct flight from Bristol to the USA in years begins
However some peak dates are much more expensive currently, with flights from July 6-20 costing you a much more pricey £540. However, flights to the popular US destination of New York would cost July 6-13 would cost a similar £511 and would involve stopping off in Amsterdam.
The only other direct flight across the Atlantic from Bristol Airport is the ten-hour flight from Bristol to Cancun, the tourist destination in Mexico.
There has been an ongoing battle over the expansion of Bristol Airport, with climate campaigners criticising the airport’s plans to expand capacity to 12 million passengers every year. And earlier this week, the Bristol Airport Action Network group won permission to challenge the Government’s decision to allow that expansion at the High Court.
However, one of the arguments put forward by Bristol Airport - and the one which the Mayor of Bristol repeated often in his support of the expansion plans - was that by increasing the capacity for Bristol Airport, and the range of destinations the airport, it would limit the number of people having to travel to bigger airports like Gatwick and Heathrow in London. This, the Mayor and Bristol Airport said, would actually be more environmentally-friendly.
