Recently I had the option to attend an event in Dublin at the last minute. Usually this would mean spending quite a bit of money on flights, so I resigned myself to not going. Since I quite like searching for flights, I had a bit of a noodle around online anyway.

Ryanair was my first choice and their best price was around £79 going out Sunday and back Tuesday. Factoring in taxis, this brought my cost to £140. Two nights was not ideal for me and their price for day return on the Sunday was well over £200.

A Day Return On British Airways

Where possible, I will choose to fly on British Airways and on a whim I decided to check out their web site. As I expected, flying out Sunday and back Tuesday a la Ryanair was more expensive.

Purely out of interest and with no expectations, I decided to see how much a day return flight would cost. I moved the selection accordingly and the web site threw something like this up.


Am I reading this right? £77.50 for a hand baggage only day return flight from London Heathrow to Dublin? I almost couldn’t believe my eyes at this unexpected development.

With ground transportation, it comes out to £150 for me which is £10 more than the Ryanair option plus I can do a day return rather than a two night stay which suits me far better.

Is This Usual?

Just in case it was a fluke, I had a look at some other dates. It seems that for Saturday and Sunday on several dates in December, you can do these day returns at this price. It must be due to the fact everyone is waiting to travel at Christmas that the earlier dates are cheaper.

For fun I decided to check the reverse, flying from Dublin to London. It is almost as cheap with fares at €101 return for hand baggage only. I think that is a very good deal!

Overall Thoughts

It is quite nice when you find a good deal on an airline you use all the time. I needed to get to Dublin cheaply and I can do it on my preferred carrier. The fact I also have lounge access for a bite to eat before each flight is also very handy.

Day return flights on week days are usually extremely expensive to cater for business demand, so it is interesting to see it priced so enjoyably low on these December weekends. Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Aero Icarus via Wikimedia Commons.