LHR to MCO via NYC

Hello,

I'm looking for advice as I plan a trip to MCO in March/April.

I am wanting to take advantage of a half day Friday but as I live in Scotland, all the MCO flights have already left by the time I will get to London or Manchester. So, rather than travel down and overnight there and fly on Saturday, I thought I might get the jump and fly to NYC and get to MCO a couple of hours before the direct MCO flights land on Saturday, what are your thoughts on this schedule:

Fri 31st
VS025 - LHR to JFK (2015 - 2310)

Saturday 1st
DL2600 - JFK to MCO (1105 - 1356)

Then the return
Sunday 16th
VS016 - MCO to LGW (1950 - 0905)

Questions are:
1) Does this seem ok to you experienced flyers? (4 adults and 2 children)
2) How do I book this as neither Delta or Virgin's booking online booking engines allow me to do this? (They say that there are no flights or flights are full). Booking them as singles make the price rocket (?!)
3) Any thoughts on the best way to get to connect from and then to Edinburgh or Glasgow? Is it just a case of booking a BA shuttle or Sleasyjet?
4) What is best way of using Flying Club miles for this trip (100,000 or so)? I would like to fly PE if poss but not essential.

Thank you for your help

Richard

It's certainly doable, but I'd ask yourself whether your kids can handle it. Remember with the time difference you'll be arriving at JFK at 4am UK time so they'll be very tired. You then need to allow a good hour to clear immigration & customs and get to your hotel which realistically gives you a maximum of 7 hours before you need to head back to the airport for your MCO flight.
So probably no more than 5 hours sleep.

You obviously know your kids but that sounds like an ordeal rather than a fun start to a holiday to me, just to get a couple of extra hours in Orlando.

Can you not fly from GLA? There's a direct MCO flight on the days you want.

Apologies for not answering the specific questions you asked, but I'm seconding the direct GLA->MCO option! It'll be easier to book and you can make use of your miles easily as well.

If you'd still prefer to go via JFK, Delta operate an Ediburgh<->JFK service that will earn you VS miles, so there would be no need to head down to London.

You should be abe to book this on DL using the 'multi-city' option or phone VS. You can even get them to price in the GLA-LON legs as well.


Bookign those separatly leaves you unprotected should for example your MCO-LGW flight be delayed and you would be respnsible for rebooking and paying for new flights yourself of your missed your flight to GLA.

Why you would want to inflict a lot of extra flights on you and your family I don't know as I don't see any advantages but plenty of extra costs.

Thanks for the advice - I knew you would come up trumps.

I can't see a direct VS flight from MCO on Sunday 16th April. Am I being daft?

Unfortunately not to GLA - that's not a daily service. There's flights to LGW and MAN on that day.

If the date is fixed, you could try a route via JFK using the Delta service to EDI if you wanted to at least get back to Scotland. Alternatively there is a MCO-GLA flight on 14th April (and 15th but that seems to be much more expensive for some reason).

There’s no Sunday flight. Only Fri & Sat. The Saturday flights are both full in economy so you’d have to take the Friday morning off and fly then. I’d also recommend flying back on the 14th so at least that’s £950 rather than £2,500pp. Granted, the £2,500 fare is in PE.

I'd forget about using your miles (why can't I see Glasgow availability?!) as the chances of being able to use them over Easter is very slim - especially for six of you.

I would go with the direct outbound and MCO-JFK-EDI for the return.
This would then get you back to Scotland with luggage checked straight through from Orlando. Connecting in JFK from a domestic flight is easy.