Save thousands by flying from these cities

There could be an easy way for a family of four to save at least £1,000 on a trip to Sydney or Tokyo. 

Instead of flying direct from Heathrow or Gatwick, find the cheapest flight you can to Istanbul. 

When we analysed price data from Skyscanner, we saw that the average flight from London to Sydney cost £1,012, while Istanbul to Sydney was £653. That’s a difference of £359 per person. For Tokyo, it was £350 cheaper per person. 

We’ve seen flights to Istanbul from Bristol, Manchester and London for less than £30 (more, if you want to take a lot of luggage, but it should still make the overall journey cheaper).

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Cheap long-haul flights

London and Amsterdam are most expensive for flights

We compared the price of flying to eight long-haul destinations from nine European airports – London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Madrid, Oslo, Paris and Stockholm.

On average, across all the destinations, it was £139pp cheaper to fly from Istanbul than Amsterdam, and £137pp cheaper than flying from London.

Oslo was the second cheapest airport (£612), followed by Paris and Stockholm (both £641), Madrid (£672) Copenhagen (£682) and Frankfurt (£705).

There were big variations, depending on where you’re heading. Unsurprisingly, Istanbul is not a good choice for westbound flights. 

Copenhagen had the cheapest flights to New York (£355) and Oslo had the cheapest flights to Los Angeles (£401). However, these flights would themselves be be indirect (as opposed to flying from London). Paris had the cheapest flights to Madrid.

Why is it so expensive to fly from London?

London is the second most expensive city to fly from, after Amsterdam, for our selection of eight long-haul destinations. It’s nearly £200pp cheaper to fly from Oslo to Bangkok than from London; £247 cheaper to fly to Tokyo from Stockholm; and £182 cheaper to fly to Cape Town from Oslo (despite being a longer distance). 

Part of the explanation is tax. The long-haul tax from the UK in economy class is £94. Taxes from other countries range from zero (Turkey, Sweden) to around £40 (France). It could also be that high demand for flights from the UK pushes the prices up.

Major hubs compared

The five biggest European hubs are London Heathrow, Istanbul, Amsterdam Schiphol, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Madrid Barajas.

Of these, Istanbul was the cheapest for all the eastbound flights and for Cape Town, while Paris was the cheapest for New York, LA and Mexico City.