Cheap flights to NYC advice

My brother in law lives in NYC and is having his first baby in Oct, so we are planning on getting out there to see them in early Nov.

But we are of limited means, and so I was wondering if anyone had any good leads or bright ideas of how to get there real cheap...?

I did UTFS but feel free to unleash the mergatron if needs be.

My recent experience is that the airlines have taken a lot of capacity out of the system so the planes are pretty full and prices relatively high at the moment, though I know that is not what you want to hear. I fly there often for work and my family is in the U.S. so I travel back often. Will give it some thought.

have heard of people flying to Toronto and driving a hire car, I don't know if it is still cheaper. It would make it into a slightly different trip though....

Sound.
I'll look into that too...

Cheapest I can fidn is £438 per person

Try to fly into an airport. not a building

Oof!

Take into account the 3+ hours customs wait at border between Canada and New York State

Also I think the drive must be pretty long? if you are looking into alternative cities can try Baltimore as that airport is connected to the Amtrak train line that runs along the East Coast into Manhattan (obv Newark is too). The Philadelphia -> NYC train is a breeze but you would have to find a way from the airport to the train station. Warning: I havent looked but suspect the train fares would eliminate any airfare savings. IME £438pp is not a bad rate in the current world.

Boston?

pick your days carefully. When mrs_com and I went there was generally a sweetspot that made the airline think you weren't going on either a business trip (2-4 days) or a cushy holiday (7-10 days). If you can, play around with the flying out & flying back days and you should see the costs fluctuate.

Looks like flights to other cities only work out to be £10/20 cheaper, and we would probably spend at least twice that doing a train transfer or whatever.

Currently looking into a cheap as chips skip into Europe (Amsterdam/Munich/Paris) and a direct flight from there. Might work out a little cheaper, something to do with the rate the UK taxes long haul or something

You could get a British Airways Amex card, use the card to pay off your mortgage and collect frequent flier points. Redeem those for flights to NYC. Get new mortgage and pay off card debt when you get home?

Of course BA frequent flier miles are nearly impossible to redeem...

Use the fare alerts on kayak.com to give you an indicator how the prices are going. They have/had this graph so you can see the price curve of how much the flights are.

Like others said, £450 return all in is pretty much the norm these days. Anything cheaper is a steal.

Last year the cheapest rates I could get were with Kuwait Airways who had a sale on for the majority of the year.

Kayak is good.

The last time I did this journey I did City - Schipol - JFK, flying with Swiss. Recommended (at the time it was also the cheapest option).