London flights can be found with relative ease, as there are eight airports in total that are in or very close to London. The majority of the air traffic, however, flows through five. London Heathrow Airport located in Hillingdon in West London is the single most busy airport in the world in terms of the number of international passengers and flights it accommodates. Heathrow is also the main hub of British Airways. London Gatwick Airport is the second biggest in the city and is located south of London in West Sussex. London Stansted Airport in Essex, London Luton Airport in Bedfordshire, and London City Airport round out the list of the most prevalent and frequently trafficked airports in London.

London City Airport, the smallest of the five, primarily deals with business travelers and offers a full range of short flights and jet services. If you are an international traveler heading to London from overseas, you are likely to fly into either Heathrow or Gatwick. Finding cheap flights to London has everything to do with booking your reservations well in advance of your trip. If you plan ahead, it is possible to fly to London for relatively inexpensive rates.

If you are making the trip to the UK from another major international hub such as New York, Chicago, or Atlanta, your airfare to London will include a layover before making the final descent into London. A common itinerary for those booking London flights and leaving from a smaller airport is to lay over at a hub such as JFK before continuing on to London.

London Map

Sometimes it is possible to find even better rates if you can book your flight as a nonstop from one of the bigger hubs. So, for instance, if you are traveling from a smaller airport in the Midwest and you can find a great price on a flight to NYC, you may be best served to book your airfare to London directly from NYC. If the price of the flight to NYC plus the price of the airfare to London is less than the total cost of departing from the smaller airport, you are in prime position to take advantage of even better savings. It cannot however be reiterated enough, that the best way to find cheap flights to London is to book them a couple of months in advance. Six to eight weeks should be plenty of time as the flights can tend to go back up in price if you book too far out.

If you are traveling within Europe you should be able to find London for far cheaper. There are many smaller, domestic carriers that provide cheap flights to London from other popular destinations including Amsterdam, Paris, and Rome. Sometimes the price to fly from one of these places to London is less than the price of a train ticket. It just depends on when you book and what offers are available at the time. For those people planning extended stays in Europe, cross-continental flights can be a cost-effective way to plan your trip when combined with savvy train travel on the Eurail.