Help a nervous flyer plan routes that minimise flight changes and time spent in the air

For anyone else looking to minimize time in the air when flying from Europe to North America, it bears remembering that during much of the year, Air Canada and WestJet both fly narrow-body jets between St. John’s, Newfoundland and London Heathrow, as well as from St. John’s to Dublin. These flights are only about five hours long. There are other flights from St. John’s to New York and Toronto, and from there you can get just about anywhere in North America.

I am sure other search engines have this, but I have only seen it on Hipmunk, an “agony” filter – which sorts flights by a combination of price, number of stops and duration to find one that’s most comfortable.

It only caters for flights so you may miss out on alternate means of transport.

I would normally recommend arriving at NYC / Washington / Boston (as these are the nearest airports) but the Carolinas are also very accessible as they are all on the Eastern coast and you can find plenty of direct flights.

The problem is a direct flight between say Heathrow and Durham is almost 9 hours; and if you are not comfortable with flying 9 hours may seem unbearable; however compared with the convenience of having no connections, and it being the quickest option it might be favorable to you.

Some people prefer to break the monotony of a long flight with stopovers (this can also mean a cheaper ticket). The positive side is that you get plenty of time to walk, stretch, eat and relax each time you deplane. The downside is your flight is generally longer – you run the risk of having your luggage delayed, and if you run into any weather issues you may end up staying longer than expected at a particular transit point. However, you may look at this as more of an adventure to write/brag about with your friends rather than another “oh great, stuck in an airport” story.

My advice would be to consider alternate airports and try to fly from a popular hub airport (you have Gatwick/Heathrow and Amsterdam/Frankfurt/Paris in close proximity) to see if there are alternate options available.

I’m a fan of Google Flights – although there are plenty of other options that others would recommend, such as Kayak and Skyscanner.

The nice thing about Google Flights is that you can enter a list of airports you’re willing to fly from and to. So in your case, you could search for flights from either Edinburgh or Glasgow, to Raleigh-Durham or Charlotte, and get a bunch of options.

I’d suggest that whatever you do, you allow plenty of time (3 hours, perhaps) in the US if you’re connecting there as queues for Border Control can be long. You can instead connect in the UK; American has a flight from Raleigh to Heathrow, for example, and Charlotte is even easier to get to. As has been pointed out, you could also take the train to London, thus making it a single flight – although probably not much cheaper (if at all).

Unfortunately, the way flight pricing works is that the shorter, more direct flights do tend to be more expensive. It can seem perverse that a longer set of flights can be cheaper, but it allows for effective price discrimination. As someone who’s terrified of heights too I’m still not 100% happy with flying – although it did at least get somewhat better eventually for me.

I’m still an avid Skyscanner user.

It gives you a great understanding of what flights are possible with a number of advanced search options available. I then make my own contact with the airlines to try and get the best price possible. Phoning them is really underrated in the modern age of computers as you can almost always get discounts from the advertised ‘web fare’

Of the top of my head I know there are daily direct flights to Raleigh, North Carolina from London terminals with a number of airlines. For me, short flights before longer flights helps with the fear. Flying from Scotland to London is an ideal short flight to build up to the transatlantic flight to USA.

See also this question of tips to overcome fear of flying

Rome2Rio is great for seeing a wide range of options, and it’s not just limited to flights. If there are good options involving other modes of transport, it shows them, and it has no problem mixing modes of transport.

For example, you can enter “Scotland” to “North Carolina”, and it includes options not just flying from both Glasgow (including some direct flights) and Edinburgh, but also involving travelling to London (which could be by train/coach) and flying direct from there.

Add your exact towns (not necessarily airports: the actual locations you’re flying to and from) and it’ll take transport to and from them into account. Almost door-to-door. If it’s easier to fly into a lesser-known airport just across the border in a neighbouring state then use other transport to get to your target town, it’ll show you.

Of course these still involve a long flight – you’re not going to get around the problem of needing to fly over the Atlantic! – but at least there can be only the one flight. Another nice feature of Rome2Rio for nervous travellers is that you can see the actual routes clearly on the map. You can see how similar the distances in each option are (including, for example, that going via Canada is much less of a detour than you might think).

I thought there might be an option involving flying to New York then getting the Greyhound bus to North Carolina, but I guess the difference it makes to flying time is so small, and the difference it makes to total journey time is so huge, it’s probably not worth it.