Your holiday options depend on where you live and where you are new. Telegram The research reveals that Londoners enjoy more than twice as many non-stop flight options as people living in Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham.
Using data provided by OAG, the study shows all the destinations you can reach from London, based on flight schedules in summer 2023, compared to the 10 largest regional airports (note that a few new routes announced for 2024 will change this picture slightly).
Londoners have 373 options for summer holiday destinations (across five airports), Manchester has 170, Edinburgh has 134, Birmingham has 118, Bristol has 106, Glasgow has 76, Newcastle has 69, Leeds-Bradford has 68, It reveals Nottingham has 65, Liverpool has 57 and Belfast has 53.
It’s no surprise that London, home to four of the five biggest airports in the country, is better connected than elsewhere. But the data still reveals a fleet of surprising destinations served only by the capital, as well as some unexpected spots that can be reached from every corner of the country.
Destinations served by each airport
If you want to visit one of these 16 destinations, you won’t have too much trouble whether you live in Belfast, Glasgow or the East Midlands: they are accessible from London and all 10 regional airports covered in the study.
Three of them are on the Spanish mainland (Alicante, Barcelona, Malaga), five are the Spanish islands (Fuerteventura, Ibiza, Lanzarote, Palma de Mallorca, Tenerife), Antalya, Corfu, Faro, Jersey, Kos, Krakow, Malta and Paris. the rest of the list.
The data confirms what we already knew: that Spain is our favorite holiday destination by a wide margin. In 2019, the last fully “normal” year for pre-pandemic travel, 18.1 million UK residents traveled there, while France saw 10.3 million Britons and Italy 5.1 million.
Destinations You Can Only Reach from London
There are a whopping 179 destinations you can reach from London airports alone. Some of it is to be expected (especially long-haul destinations like Tokyo and Perth, Australia), but there are other destinations you feel like you can reach non-stop from at least one regional airport.
Let’s start with European cities. Biarritz, Ljubljana, Tallinn and Vilnius – gorgeous cities each worthy of a weekend getaway – can only be reached from London airports. Others connected solely to the capital include Zaragoza, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Dortmund.
When you travel beyond the M25 for a winter sun island getaway, options are limited. Caribbean favorites Antigua and St Lucia are only reachable from London’s major airports, and it’s the same story for the Indian Ocean paradises of Mauritius and the Maldives.
Across the Atlantic, from London as well as Edinburgh and Manchester, you can reach New York City, Orlando and Atlanta; Washington and Chicago can be reached via London and Edinburgh. However, you can only reach Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin and Seattle directly from London. Virgin is restarting its Manchester to Vegas route from June 2024.
Surprisingly well (and poorly) connected destinations
Verona has connections to London (who knew) and all the regional airports in our study except Liverpool. The same number of major regional airports serve Rome, and fewer connect to Venice. Izmir, Turkey’s third largest city, also has connections to eight of the 10 largest regional airports, while only three serve Istanbul.
Looking to fly to Bergerac in central France? You are lucky. Six of the regional airports in our study serve flights to the city (that’s more than the number serving Bordeaux). Other surprises on the list include Poznan (which also has connections to six regional airports), Toulouse (four), Turin (four), Rzeszow (three) and Cluj Napoca (three).
As for destinations that are surprisingly poorly served? Away from London, only two regional airports (Edinburgh and Manchester) fly to Vienna, one of Europe’s leading cities. Seville, like Helsinki, is served by only these two regional airports, and beyond the capital, Gibraltar can only be reached via Bristol and Manchester.
Postcodes furthest from an international airport
You’re never too far from an international airport in the UK. Live in central London and you have five options within an hour on public transport. Live in Stoke-on-Trent and you’re around an hour’s drive from Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and East Midlands airports.
One of the furthest corners of the country from an international airport is the Cumbrian coast around Whitehaven, just west of the Lake District. From here your nearest airport is Newcastle, approximately 100 miles away and just over two hours’ drive.
Some corners of Scotland have particularly poor connections to the world. The tip of the Mull of Galloway is a good two and a half hours’ drive from Glasgow Airport. Durness, in the far north-east of the Highlands, is a similar drive from the nearest airport, Inverness, to John O’Groats. Grigadale is more than four hours’ drive from Glasgow and Inverness airports.
Towns on the Welsh coast also have a tour on their hands. But the furthest, by some margin, are the settlements on the Ardnamurchan peninsula. It will take around three hours from Aberystwyth to Cardiff, Liverpool and Birmingham airports, while those living at the far end of the Welsh Llŷn Peninsula will be more than two and a half hours away from the nearest airport (Liverpool or Manchester). on a beautiful day.