Just wanted to share some info as I've booked my first return flight from Basel to London. I'll be doing this quite regularly as, although I'm going to Basel tomorrow to start my new job, my life at the moment is still in London.

I booked a return, going Friday (29th Jan) evening coming back Sunday (31st Jan) evening.

I checked Easyjet and - ouch - so expensive for a no-frills airline. Maybe because it's still ski season and maybe because I'm booking at short notice.

I checked BA and their latest flight on Friday evening out of Basel is 17:30 which is a touch early for me. And it was expensive.

So, as I only want a direct flight, that left Swiss Air (or whatever they're actually called now). On expedia.co.uk it came to £220. On Swiss's website it came to 340CHF, so £205. At one point it was 310CHF but it quickly went back up again.

I was about to book when ... it recommended I join Miles & More. So I did that and as that took me to Lufthansa's website thought I'd check there.

Booked on Lufthansa's website for 192€ which is £170.

Thought I'd share that info.

yep, the wonders of air travel.
Enjoy Basel, was there for a few years. Still back there now and again.

When I used to travel between London and Zurich every week, I found that it was (a lot) cheaper to buy a return ticket starting the journey from London than from Zurich. It might be the same for London-Basel flights.

If you're going to be doing this on a regular basis, it may be worth buying a one way ticket to London on easyjet (but not at the last minute) and then booking all your flights from London afterwards.

Thanks Mag, I'll look into that. Things must have changed, because I always found it cheaper to do it my way around when living in Germany previously. The only trick I learnt that made a big difference was to ensure, whichever way I booked the flights, that it included staying a Saturday night. In other words, flights Sunday/Monday - Friday were a no-no.

I'll price some weekends up and see what the difference is.

The general "rule of thumb" I've seen for cheap flights is that you should try to schedule it so that you are flying on Tues, Weds or Thurs if at all possible as they "know" that the folks flying Fri - Mon are business travelers.

Unfortunately, it seems that you ARE a business traveler and so have to fly on one of the weekend days... no? (Maybe in effort to save money, you can work it out so that your days off are Tues - Thurs instead of the normal weekend)