Can I buy an extra flight without breaking the bank?
Q In June 2023 we have a package holiday booked to Sorrento. As a surprise for my husband, I would love to do the following: abandon our planned return flights on 19 June and instead fly east across the Mediterranean to our favourite island, Crete. But flights seem to be thin on the ground and/or very expensive.
Name supplied
A What a lovely idea to make the most of midsummer and add an extra dimension to your holiday in southern Italy. The
opportunity to make more of being in the Mediterranean is one that few people on package holidays take up, but in my opinion it is well worthwhile. For example, a holiday on the Portuguese Algarve could easily extend to a journey through the great cities of Andalucia: Seville, Cordoba, Granada and Malaga using buses and trains.
You are planning to go one better: combining southern Italy with the biggest and most beautiful Greek island. The question is how. Sorrento is served by Naples airport, and there are direct buses from Sorrento to the airport as well as the outstanding Circumvesuviana railway. The smart thing to do, though, would be to use the transfer portion included in the package holiday to take you to Naples airport – where you can let the travel firm know that you are heading elsewhere rather than home to the UK. That, of course, requires there to be an alternative flight at an appropriate time on Monday 19 May.
The morning option is early – 9.40am departure – and expensive, at £208 one way. But the trip from Naples via Athens to Heraklion will be on Aegean, a top-notch airline, with a swift 50-minute connection in the Greek capital. You should arrive in Heraklion at 2.05pm, in time for a late lunch.
The evening connection is much cheaper and faster: just £37 one way for the 6.30pm Ryanair flight from Naples to Chania in western Crete. It takes under two hours.
If neither of these suits, that is probably because you are heading for the eastern part of Crete (making an evening arrival in Chania unsuitable) and the morning departure is too early. In that case, I am afraid the best plan is probably to take the homeward bound plane and start your journey to Crete from the UK. All the flight options I can see involve laborious connections in places such as Stuttgart and Milan, at fairly high fares.
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