Flight planning when only preferred airport of arrival known.

[darrenmorris]

Hi all,

A few months ago I was to attend a conference at a hotel close to Paris Orly airport.

I am within easy reach of several UK airports, but absolutely nowhere on the web could I find out which airlines / airports (IF ANY) provided services from the UK to Paris Orly.

All the travel planning sites (Expedia, Travelocity, Amadeus etc.) require that you know both city (or airport) of arrival AND departure before they will give anything away; which is no use in the situation I described above!

Does anybody know of an online resource that would help out in the situation I described? Thanks!

(by the way, one option is to hunt down the website of your desired airport and study live arrivals / departures data, but that is not really of any use when some "lesser" routes are only operated once or twice a week)

adds: Another way to put it, is that I just want to be able to input a known airport and view a list of all destinations (country/airport) served - ideally broken down by country so I can then see at a glance where I might be able to fly there from.

[PAXboy]

Welcome aboard 'dm'.

"(by the way, one option is to hunt down the website of your desired airport and study live arrivals / departures data, but that is not really of any use when some "lesser" routes are only operated once or twice a week)"

I know of no other way available to the private individual. This method has always proved extremely successful. The destination site listing, this is from AirWise (http://www.airwise.com/airports/europe/ORY/ORYarl.html), is the place to start and then visit the web site of those airlines serving the UK.

Off the top I can see direct services: BE; AF. Some airports also list the actual schedules. Bear in mind that we are now entering Winter schedules and many changes across mid-Sept/mid-Oct.

When you look on the web sites of people like EZY do not go for the booking section but timetable/schedule. EZY do not go to ORY from the UK, only CDG. ORY is a French base.

BE only fly from LCY (London City) and do so on Weekdays only. AF will have more choice.

There will be many more options with indirects, if you wish to limit your UK travel and most of us do, then indirect is the path. You are then free to prioritise in the normal way: Price? Time? Schedule? Location of departure field?

So, I suggest, that with an internet connection and half an hour to spare, you will be able to find the information which you seek.

[Globaliser]

You can get a limited amount of help from http://www.skyscanner.net - this shows a selection of low fare airlines only, but if you put in your destination airport as the "origin", the "destination" list limits itself to the available destinations from that "origin" on the airlines with which the site has connections.

You can get a similar tool if you visit most of the low fare airlines' own websites - the Navitaire booking system which most of them use has a similar function. You can use the destination airport's list of airlines to get a hitlist of suspects to try this on.

These don't add up to a very satisfactory solution but I hope it's better than nothing.

[Pax Vobiscum]

A possible low-tech method is to consult the OAG Flight Guide or similar - the entries for Paris run to about 20 pages. A friendly travel agent should be able to provide this (or even do the work for you). OAG also provide an electronic version, but it suffers from the same limitations as the on-line sites in terms of your needs.

[darrenmorris]

Thanks the replies (and welcome)!

PAXBoy - absolutely right, the information IS out there if you dig about a bit and I agree half an hour infront of the Interweb and you can figure out most things; I just feel there should be a far easier and quicker way to plan your way into somewhere when all you know is your destination, but have numerous departure options open to you.

Globaliser - great observation there on using the SkyScanner interface in reverse - shame it's limited in scope though...

Thanks again;

D.