BA day trips from Gatwick

[Sudz74]

A few years ago, for daughter’s 21st, I took her on a day trip to Venice with BA from LGW. Worked perfectly and we upgraded cheaply or with Avios to CE on return to have food and drink in lounge/flight to save on Venice prices. I remember the c crew being amazed what we were doing bizarrely.

Anyway, @Michael C “s post in daily thread from yesterday about booking LHR-CDG got me thinking as I’m always on the look out for similar to do with daughter #2. We live a few minutes from Gatwick so LHR wouldn’t work for a day trip which rules out most capital cities but I was wondering if anyone has spotted any early out late rtn combos around 2hr flight time of places where airport is easy travel from centre? (And immigration queues aren’t a potential nightmare) Can be anytime of year.

Any thoughts appreciated

[davefl]

https://www.flightsfrom.com/LGW?durationFrom=60.00&durationTo=150.00&timeFrom=300&timeTo=540&from=LGW&state=1

There’s your options for outbound. You’re pretty much spoiled for choice for interesting cities.

[NorthernLass]

It’s always a bit of an unknown with immigration queues, of course, but IME the smaller the airport, the shorter the wait. We went to Limoges last year, which has a tiny number of flights so we were the on only flight on the mornings we arrived and departed. I don’t know of LGW serves LIM but there are probably similar destinations, though some of them might be seasonal.

[Richie]

Gatwick has had BA flights to both LIG and LIM in the past.

[The real Swiss Tony]

Another smart way to search this would be with kayak-dot-co-dot-uk. You can filter down by airline, set departure & return time windows and remove multi stop flights, too.

[alastairtravel]

There’s a bunch of Facebook groups that share tips on this sort of thing – search Extreme Day Trips and maybe add the airport name you are closest to

[Richie]

For winter there’s daytrips to Jersey possible.
Porto is possible outbound on easyJet, inbound on BA.

[Sudz74]

Lots of ideas and pointers. Thanks all

[LD27]

There are lots of choices, especially in summer months. We’ve done day trips to cities such as Malaga, Madrid, Venice, Nice, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Jersey, Copenhagen and Bordeaux (not all from Gatwick and sometimes returning to LHR). I would definitely use the same airline and return ticket as the only time we had 2 separate tickets, easyJet cancelled our outbound flight and our inbound was with BA! On one occasion we went to Basel. No snow there but Heathrow had white out. We had 2 nights’ hotel courtesy of BA. Same happened in Venice because of strong winds in UK – 2 unplanned nights!

Start planning. There are so many options. As someone else said, just make sure there’s fast and easy transport to city centre.

[SamG]

BAs Gatwick schedule doesn’t lend itself too much to day trips anymore as most of the flights are longer and once daily or less. But Easyjet has plenty of Gatwick options. My favourite is Amsterdam – very short flight, very quick into the city and loads to do for a day trip.

[t42]

I’ve also done a day trip to Amsterdam from Gatwick. IIRC you can prebook a slot through security to save time queuing on the return.