Flying to Belize
Lucy | November 22, 2010What’s the best way to find Belize flights?
After years of advising people about Belize travel arrangements, we summarize the options and strategies this way:
What airlines fly to Belize?
There are not that many options for flying to Belize because it’s a small country and there are only a few flights/day, and all go through the United States. There are no direct flights from Europe or Canada. You fly to Belize on one of five carriers: Continental (out of Houston), American (out of Dallas or Miami), U.S. Airways (out of Charlotte), Delta (out of Atlanta), or Grupo Taca (out of Houston or Miami). Even if you wanted to go to Belize after traveling in Costa Rica, for example, you would have to fly first to Miami from Costa Rice, then back south to Belize.
How do I find cheap flights to Belize?
There are no really cheap flights, for some reason people expect to find $300 round trip fares to Belize just by looking harder. You should expect to pay around $600 round trip, depending on where you are coming from, of course. If you find a fare less than that, buy it! You will get the best rates if you book early. Another technique is to try other dates (fly in Thursday even if you really need to arrive Saturday). Or try a different airport, possibly driving a little further. If you get a killer rate on a flight to Cancun, you can take the bus down, see our blog post “How to get to Belize from Cancun”. You can fly to Belize from Cancun, but it’s so expensive it cancels out the savings on the Cancun leg of the journey.
Any other advice on flying to Belize?
When you make your reservations, try to arrange for as few connecting flights as possible. If you have several connections, small delays can add up to missing your final flight from your gateway city to Belize. If at all possible, do not accept reservations with less than two hours between connections; very tight connections increase the possibility that you will miss one of your connecting flights. If you are flying in a day early you don’t have to be as concerned about multiple and tight connections. Because most airlines only fly once a day to Belize, if you miss your final flight to Belize, you will be 24 hours late.
We fly to Belize every year, what do we do?
From Moab we drive to Grand Junction, CO or Salt Lake City, UT and on to Houston or Dallas on whichever airline gives us the best deal, or with which we have frequent flyer points, and we often overnight in that US city if the connections would be too tight to get to Belize in one day. We might then switch to Continental or American to fly to Belize. This way we get the best price, and if staying in the US overnight, our luggage can catch up (it may be still behind).
Belize Air Schedules and Rates
For Belize air schedules, visit our Flying to Belize web page. For rates visit our Belize Flights page.
Our guest Rich Mitchell took this photo out of his plane window on the way to Belize. He put his sunglasses over the lens!
