Travel from Munich to London

I was thinking of a weekend trip to London at some point, and wondering what the cheapest way to get there would be (for 2 people). The obvious choices are plane, train, and car. The car would have to be a rental, but it is only one car rental for two people, compared to two plane or train tickets.

What would be the cheapest leaving Friday evening, back by a Sunday night?

Not sure when I will do this, depends on cost!

If you are considering only a weekend trip, flying is the only option. Otherwise you'll spend the entire time travelling.

Ryanair!!! Or Easyjet

Costs aside, how would you want to pull that off using a car? Gives you at best a few hours to spend in London before you have to turn back... (if you can quickly find parking, that is)

If you are only going for a weekend, the drive will take too much time as others have already said.
Even if you did drive there, would you really want a car inside London?

I have to agree and say look for cheap flights.
MT

As I understand it, there are no Ryanair flights from Munich. There are from Salzburg or Bodensee though. easyJet is the cheapest way from Munich itself most of the time.

Yeah Salzburg.

It is actually not to bad and gets you in earlier than the Easyjet flight. You check on line (just hand luggage)* get a train from Munich at 7.30 arive in at 8.55 jump in a taxi to the airpot arrive at 9.15. Don't check-in!!! go thru security and then your flight is at 9.50. You are in Stanstead for aprox. 10.45 and in London 12.30.
If you go via Easyjet you will be in London at around 2 or 3ish (flight is 11.30).

* If you don't you need to get the train at 6.30 and you arrive in a litter earlier 8.45 but then have time to get there before the check-in deadline of 40mins before the flight...

Easyjet usually have the lowest prices, although you'll have to factor in the additional costs of getting into London from Stansted - about £25 return by train, as opposed to £8 return from Heathrow. Weekend flights will always be more expensive than midweek flights, and once you start looking at hotel prices you'll realise that the transport to London is the least of your worries.

Lufthansa sometimes have cheap flights too

Stanford, the train you suggest is an IC, which costs €27 each way. By the time you pay for that train (nearly €60 return) and a taxi in Salzburg and the Stansted Express (€40 return) it would be cheaper and quicker to fly with Lufthansa or BA from Munich. They will take you to Heathrow and have a dozen flights a day to choose from.

Ryanair also flies out of Friedrichshafen to London-Stanstead. From Munich to Friedrichshafen, it's only about a 2-2 1/2 hour drive.

Depends when you want to fly?

What I do is one way with Easyjet since they get you back into Munich and the other way back with Ryanair and many times I pay 15 to 30 Euros. I wouldn't do it both ways it's just worth it if you need to get in earlier on the morning flight...

In general when I do the Easyjet/Ryanair method in all it costs about £90 to £130 (that's all costs Taxi, Trains, Taxi and Ticket price) compared to the average price of Luftansa which is around £140/150. (Remembering that I fly on Friday and Monday mornings the most expensive and hardest time to get the best prices). And Luftansa is a bitch for it's expensive prices.

If he/she wants to fly soonish then they will have difficultly getting the very cheapest flights anyway...

Oh just before I forget. I tip to you guys Luftsansa web-site is pooh and gives such pooh flight combinations that the cheap flights are few or non-existant. However, if you go to www.baa.com you can search for the same flights and get the prices I mentioned above.

BA web site has the same prices on it as it passes on to other sellers but Luftansa web-site does not.

Anyhow, just a tip to you all...

Er, thanks. The complete opposite of my experience as a Lufthansa frequent flyer, but anyway. I find the Lufthansa site to be extremely well laid out for finding the cheapest combination of flights, and back in the days when I never had to pay more than €99 return to London I always booked through Lufthansa direct. My tip is to book on lufthansa.co.uk or lufthansa.com and not lufthansa.de; that way you avoid the €10 "Ticket Service Charge".

I'm a frequent flier as well but my problem is I need to fly Friday afternoon and back Monday morning early. All the pre 9ish stuff is booked out by corporate clients. And when you try on their web-site: It starts of with 99 Euros but as soon as I pick the morning flights it's get bumped up to 350/400 Euros. In 4 years - I flew with Luftansa 3 times and have only just started flying with them weekly as I discovered I could book the same flights via BAA; and also because BA got rid of their Gatwick run and put up the prices for their one flight on Monday morning.

Before then I would look from time to time but never got any good deals. But in the last month I am flying with Luftsansa every week for about £140/150 which is an okay prices considering the hassle (esp. time) of Easyjet and Ryanair (inc. the hidden extra costs taxi, trains etc).

Question - when do you fly for the 99Euros...and have you ever got this price for a morning flight?

But then you have to pay in GBP, which means you get stung by the crappy exchange rate and fees for using the card outside the Eurozone if you're using a German credit card.

I work freelance, so I'm lucky in that I'm flexible with the days and times that I travel. I usually get a late morning flight out because I'm too lazy to get up any earlier and then return on the last flight since I live close to Munich airport anyway. Easyjet probably would be cheaper than Lufthansa at weekends. In fact, I've already booked a flight for September and am flying Easyjet because they were about €70 cheaper; the prices were already high because of Oktoberfest.

@MS: True, you would need a UK credit or debit card to benefit from this. The exchange rate is good though; better than the tourist rate.

However you can only book flights departing from UK airports with this, so not much use to someone wanting to fly to the UK from Munich.

And the flight booking form doesn't work properly in Firefox.

No you can then select your country of residence.

http://www.opodo.co.uk is useful 'cos it shows the BA, Lufthansa and BMI (Lufthansa in reality) flights all in one place with prices.

That said the BA direct site is better/easier for juggling dates.

I actually need to go back to London for a few days, but just cannot be arsed! Not been back for about 9 months, but I just find travelling some damn tedious. Takes most of a day in reality by the time you have driven to the airport, parked tha car, boooked in, waited for delayed take-off, landed, got baggage, through customs, get another hirecar blah blah.

Actually good point about BMI; they have a codeshare with Lufthansa on the MUC-LHR route, but their prices are sometimes lower (and sometimes higher) than Lufthansa's, so it's worth checking their website as well.

Actually, I checked those before I asked, which is why I asked... Ryanair didn't go to/from Munich, and EasyJet wanted like 400 to 800 pounds (not Euro!) for two round trip tickets for the weekend... where a car rental is only 110 Euro (but then, fuel and the train/chunnel thing that I have no idea the costs on).

Which weekend are you looking to travel?

did u check the train? Not sure if fast trains between Stutgart and Paris started though

So, rent a car to get to Friedrichshafen, then fly to London? Seems a bit crazy...



That means (to me) leaving after work Friday, ~6pm (time leaving home, flights would have to be around 9pm to have time to go to the airport), and returning as late as possible on Sunday, getting home around 10pm to 11pm at night.


I was looking at prices for this weekend. I'd consider it this weekend if it wasn't showing as soo dang expensive. So, it'll probably be a couple weeks or even months from now. But it's always going to be a "decide on Wednesday, leave Friday night" thing, which seems to impact flight costs significantly, making the car/road-trip idea seem like it might be a viable option.

The train route would be night train from Munich to Paris and then Eurostar the next morning, but flying from Munich is by far the easiest and most convenient method. If it's too expensive, plan a different date further in advance.

No, they start in June.

i mostly fly BA Munich London as i have more flights to chose from. the money you are saving on easyjet is little if you consider the stansted express ticket costs and the travel card for the london underground. at BA, you also get 1 free drink!

Hmm, good call. Actually, I just checked it, and at least for this weekend if you take the last flight out of Munich Friday night, and last flight out of London Sunday, it was €585.50 for two with tax, fees, and all... Which (I'd have to recheck and do the pound to euro conversion) maybe cheaper than EasyJet...

A bit out of my ballpark for this weekend though...

Cant you book at least a couple of weeks in advance?? I just checked for April & its only €126 pp. Also if you plan on travelling around London a bit it might be worth getting an Oyster card you can save quite a bit with this & it's also transferable, but it does take about a month to get it.

Any London visitor should DEFINITELY get an Oyster card!
Got mine at Thiefrow Airport in about 1 minute.

I was talking about at Heathrow .

Last time I was there the queue for Oyster cards was going out of the door & I couldn't be bothered to wait, & it was the same situation at Paddington, too many bloody tourists, anyway now they will mail them to Germany & you can also top up & unload online.

Dinnae got to the ticket office at Thiefrow tube station, got to the TfL Travel Shop opposite, MUCH quicker.
Certainly at Terminal 1 you can top up your Oyster in the baggage hall but you'll need either UK cash or a Chipnpin bank card.

Note there is also a Eurolines bus directly between Munich and London, which is pretty bloody cheap, but it does take about 20 hours in total to get there. So, if you only want 8 hours to check out the big smoke, then this is the trip for you.

I recommend them in comparison to EasyJet. I got the penultimate flight leaving Munich on a Friday (5pm-ish)(with EasyJet), was delayed by an hour, spent an hour waiting in a queue for the Stansted express only to discover a replacement bus was on, so I got on the bus and ended up in London around 10pm instead of about 7pm as I was hoping. Then on the return journey I got the last Sunday night flight and due to the works on the tube I had to take a long route from London to Stansted, with no stansted express, again a bus it took 4 hours through London. Thus I would recommend flying to Heathrow as the public transport from Stansted is seriously substandard. All for about 30GBP when a bus from Heathrow is not only quick but also 8GBP!

Good point actually. The Stansted Express frequently has engineering works on a Sunday. Check their website before you book anything!

I always take the National Express from Stansted. Cheaper and from my experience it took the same amount of time.

The coach is substantially slower. The train takes 40 minutes while the coach takes 80 minutes to get to Baker Street, which is roughly parallel to Liverpool Street. It is certainly cheaper though.

there is tube ticket machine at the T1 luggage hall.

when i book a flight i always compare LH, BA and easyjet. the best offer wins

Yeah, but tube ticket ain't Oyster, innit?
Oyster saves you cash considerably when compared to plain jane tube tickets.
As stated though, to use the ticket machine at any of the luggage halls you need pounds, or a card with a chip..

Is there knowone at the airport who can advise on the cheapest option on that day? Like a stansted tourist information? though beware of the queues the last anf the first flights of each day are the busiest times at the airports.

you want everything, no tourists and cheap tickets... can't have it all.

You can buy tickets there or top up an Oyster.

You cannot do a weekend road trip to London. That is ridiculous.

If you book a flight at the last minute it will be very expensive. If you book a few months in advance you will get it a lot cheaper. Do a search yourself and you'll see what I mean.

If you want to leave at the last minute you should sign up for the Lufthansa email. They release flights each week on a Wednesday that are valid for the next two weeks. They are 99/109€ return including taxes but not a ticketing fee of 10 euros. This week they have flights to Edinburgh, Prague, Venice and Vienna. If you want to go to any of those places this weekend, you should be able to get a ticket for this aforementioned price.

I hate to sound naive, but why not? I've ran it through a couple mapping programs, and it shows about a 11 to 12 hour drive each way... Road trips are about exactly that, what you see on the road.

Even if I left at 6am Saturday, I'd think I could get there by 6pm Saturday. Go out and about a bit, have a nice curry dinner and a Guinness. Head home Sunday same times. I'd actually think I'd do about 1/2 the trip Friday night, then the other half Saturday morning so I'd hope to spend some daylight hours in London.

I've done farther trips than that on weekends in the US... I know the standard answer here might be "well, this isn't the US," but could you point to some specifics about why it's unrealistic?

as long as you know where you are parking your car, not to forget the congestion charge...

Okay then another options would be to drive up to RyanAir's Franfurt Hahn. They are no doing 5 flights to London so could be cheaper even at short notice. In general I think you can say - Flights are not there for short notice unless you are Rich or on Company Expenses.

But, the Finally option is to buy some seriuosly cheap Easyjet/RyanAir flights in advance 25 Euros and 35 Euros and if you do go good if you don't then so what!!!

Good luck on working it out...

No offence Badlandz, but driving all the way to London for a curry and then driving all the way back again is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. It's not a "road trip"; there's fugg all to see from the boring, boring motorways. Europeans don't do "road trips" - we commute, and the reason is that driving here is inherently unpleasant compared to the alternatives. The 12 hours you quote excludes rest stops and the €230 cost for petrol excludes crossing the channel - you may recall from your geography lessons that Britain is an island. Allow around €300 for a return trip on the ferry. And as for the wear and tear on the car, driving on the left, negotiating the maze of roads in London, the cost of parking, the numbing sensation in your arse after ten hours staring at concrete... God, what a terrible, terrible idea when you can just jump on a plane and be drinking real ale in a London pub in the time it would take you to drive to Frankfurt.

Not a great deal to see really, especially if you're tearing past at 80mph. You're crossing the Northern European Plain. It's flat and boring for the most part.


Because it's really tiring. If you do it in one hit you won't be fit for much except sleep once you arrive.

um, crazier than driving to London for a weekend?

We actually did the drive to Friedrichshafen and Ryanair combo a few weekends ago. Total cost for 2 people return was 53€. We have our own car, tho', so you'd have to add car rental fees and gas into the equation.

The 'Easyjet there/ Ryanair back' tip is a good one!