andz From South Africa, joined Feb 2004, 8298 posts, RR: 11 Posted (6 months 1 week 5 hours ago) and read 2011 times:
Flying from Johannesburg, direct to USA or via Frankfurt, using Star Alliance carriers only, which route and carriers would you use to visit the following cities, in the following order? Keep in mind the waiting time and cost of regional flight against road transportation from major airports to the destination cities.
1: Milwaukee WI, Madison WI, Laurel MD
2: Madison, Milwaukee, Laurel
3: Laurel, Milwaukee, Madison
To me the logical in and out airports are IAD and ORD but beyond that I'm a bit clueless.
Looking at leaving JNB on a Saturday, flying back the following Saturday, during May 2013.
After Monday and Tuesday even the calendar says WTF...
RamblinMan From United States of America, joined Oct 2010, 1080 posts, RR: 1 Reply 3, posted (6 months 1 week 3 hours ago) and read 2012 times:
Driving Chicago-Milwaukee takes around 2 hours (avg traffic, it can take longer to leave the city), there are also bus and train options. Milwaukee-Madison driving takes 1.5 hours. Madison-Chicago takes around 3. Rental cars at either Chicago airport are going to be rather expensive. I would try to fly into MKE unless you want to visit Chicago as well, but you won't have direct flights to or from Europe from there.
What I would do...get a r/t ticket to IAD, then another ticket BWI-MKE on WN. You won't miss the miles on the domestic segment, you'll get free baggage, and you'll avoid the mess at ORD.
Alternatively, fly one-way BWI-MKE then get a train down to Chicago and fly back from ORD.
I like the proposal from RamblinMan. I think that FL also flies DCA-MKE, which might be an interesting alternative to BWI-MKE on WN.
Also keep in mind that multi-city itineraries, like JNB-IAD-MKE-JNB often cost only slightly more than the open jaw route of JNB-IAD/ORD-JNB. So that may well be cheaper than buying the open jaw and connecting the dots with WN or FL.
PI4EVER From United States of America, joined May 2009, 599 posts, RR: 2 Reply 7, posted (6 months 1 day 20 hours ago) and read 2011 times:
As redzeppelin pointed out, multi-city routings may result in a cheaper fare, as many long haul fare itineraries are based on mileage.
Use a Star Alliance airline website.....LH and UA both offer the multi-city option on their websites. For an accurate fare quote you must have specific dates of travel for each segment. You should be able to get fares for an itinerary such as JNB-FRA-IAD/BWI-MKE-ORD-FRA-JNB. IAD and BWI are co-terminals, and note a connection becomes a stopover.....with a break in fare calculation.....if your stop exceeds 24 hours.
On the routing I illustrated above, your stopovers......exceeding 24 hours......would be at IAD, and MKE. You can use IAD/DCA/BWI as all 3 airports are considered co-terminals, but fare may vary a bit due to different fare class availability on flights from the 3 airports.
If you use the LH website, they'll likely offer you UA or US service for flights in the USA and if you use the UA website it too will likely originate you on LH from JNB and then route you onto UA flights for any or all of the remaining itinerary.
Easy to use the mult-city function, and fun to look for particular flights or fares by date of travel. If you have a flexible travel schedule, try to avoid travel on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with midweek flights, Monday-thru-Thursdays usually offering the lowest fares.
I hope this info will be helpful to you. Good Luck with your plans, and an early welcome to the United States.
Thomas
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