Absolute beginners
What is a fly drive ?

Area navigation				Summary A surpising number of people have e-mailed me asking the title question on this page i.e. What is a flydrive ? This question is also often entered into the search engine on the website search page. Its not as daft as it sounds. If you have only ever been on package tours, there are lots of things you dont know about a fly-drive. This page hopefully will answer some of these questions. Scroll down the page to read all about it.

At its most basic, a flydrive is where you fly into a place, pick up a car and drive around the area/region staying at different places along the way. You eventually end up at the airport at which you began your drive, drop the car off and fly home. On this general theme, there are many variants. Fly drives are also known as self drive holidays, road trip holidays or multi-centre holidays.

The next most complex fly drive would be where you fly into one airport e.g. Las Vegas, drive around seeing the various sights you wish to see and end up in a different place e.g. Los Angeles where you drop off the car and fly home. Such a flight arrangement is called an 'open jaw' flight. The major stumbling block to such plans is that car hire companies will often charge a significant drop off fee (but not always so its well worth checking) if you drop off the car at a different place from where you picked it up.

You can mix and match both of the above variants with connecting flights inbetween to have a series of mini flydrives linked together. Thus you could fly to say Denver and drive around the rockies. Drop off the car at Denver and fly on to San Francisco. Drive around California before dropping the car off at Los Angeles and flying home.

Having established what a flydrive is, I will explain the various ways you can actually arrange one.

A complete fly drive package
Many companies can provide a complete fly drive package. You pay an amount of money which buys you your flights, car hire and accommodation for your chosen route. Be careful and study the details of these packages. Some will not include local taxes for the car hire or even sometimes not include the insurance for the car. However, most reputable companies will spell out what is and what is not included. Even within this section there are variations, you can buy a predetermined route or you can plan your own route and then buy the complete package.
uk-2-usa.com offers this latter service. You can define exactly what you want to do and we will quote you for an all inclusive package. Click here to access this service.
A flydrive package
A simple fly drive package is just the flights and the car hire. You decide upon your route and you arrange the accommodation. Again there are variations on a theme here. You can prebook your accommodation, you can pre-purchase vouchers for your accommodation or you can just turn up at a place and book a room for the night in a motel you like the look of. This last way is what many Americans would do. There is a huge choice of places to stay in most of the places you would wish to visit. I personally prefer pre-booking, but that is a personal point of view. I would not advise purchasing vouchers. They are usually restrictive in where you can stay (limited to one or two chains) and they can be very expensive.
This is an extremely competitive area and the deals on offer are often incomplete to make the price seem lower than it really is. The flight taxes and the car hire insurance are often added extras to the headline price. uk-2-usa.com does not attempt to compete in this cut-throat segment. Dont dismiss it however, if you are very careful and if you travel out of season, some good bargains can be found.
An independent fly-drive
In this type of holiday, you purchase your own flights, your own car hire and your own accommodation (pre-booked or as you travel). The internet has completely opened up this possibility to many people (the first holiday we did on our own involved a significant cost in trans atlantic phone calls). I would not recommend this if you are an absolute beginner. You are in my opinion better off finding your feet on a more complete package for the first few times you travel (note I am assuming you will do this more than once. Its a confident prediction, this type of holiday is addictive !). If however, you are very bold or if you are experienced in fly driving, then this is the way to totally tailor make your own holiday.
uk-2-usa.com also supports this type of holiday
Click here to access a range of online car hire quotation and booking services.
Click here to access a range of online flight quotation and booking services.
Click here to access a range of online hotel quotation and booking services.

I hope that answers any of your questions about 'what is a fly drive?'

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Absolute beginnersWhat is a fly drive ?

Absolute beginners
What is a fly drive ?