Cheap flights to San Diego may be available through the many domestic airlines that serve the airport, and the limited number of international airlines. The main airlines serving San Diego International Airport are Southwest Airlines, Delta, and American Airlines. In addition to Southwest Airlines, some of the budget airlines flying into San Diego and likely to offer cheap flights are JetBlue and WestJet.
Cheap Flights to San Diego: International A limited number of international airlines fly direct into San Diego, and these include Aeromexico (from Mexico City and San José del Cabo), Air Canada (Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver), and WestJet (Calgary). Alaska Airlines also flies between San Diego and San José del Cabo in Mexico, so might be worth checking out for a possible budget air fare.
Cheap Flights to San Diego: Domestic The best budget fares to San Diego from within the USA are likely to be with Southwest Airlines. Southwest fly from a range of US cities including Albuquerque, Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, El Paso, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Nashville, Oakland, Phoenix, Reno/Tahoe, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Francisco, San Jose in California, St. Louis, and Tucson.
Flying San Diego-San Francisco One option for driving the Pacific Coast Highway is to fly in to San Diego or San Francisco, book a one-way car rental airport to airport, and fly back from the other end. However, one-way car rentals are usually more expensive, incurring a drop fee, and it may be cheaper to drive back on the faster Interstate. As well as Southwest Airlines, Virgin America and United also fly between San Diego and San Francisco.
Flying San Diego-Seattle If you want to drive the full length of the west coast and fly back, then both Virgin America and Alaska Airlines have flights between Seattle and San Diego.
Flying San Diego-Los Angeles In addition to its two main Terminals, San Diego International Airport also has a Commuter Terminal. This is used by several airlines providing commuter flights between San Diego and Los Angeles. These include American Eagle and SkyWest Airlines (on behalf of both Delta and United Express).
International travelers might consider looking for a cheap flight into Los Angeles, and an onward connecting flight to San Diego.
San Diego's main airport is San Diego International Airport (code: SAN; tel: 619/400-2400; website: http://www.san.org), also called Lindbergh Field. It's located only about three miles from downtown San Diego, and there are several shuttle, taxi, and bus services into the city from the airport.
San Diego International Airport has two main terminals, Terminal 1 and Terminal 2, connected by a red shuttle bus.
Most international flights arrive at Terminal 2, though Air Canada uses Terminal 1. Southwest Airlines, probably the best option for cheap flights into San Diego, also uses Terminal 1. Budget flights should also be available on JetBlue, but to a limited number of destinations: New York, Boston, Salt Lake City. Other airlines flying into San Diego to check for cheap flights include Aeromexico, Alaska, Allegiant, Continental, Hawaiian, and United.
To help you in choosing your Pacific Coast Highway hotel, guesthouse, inn, bed-and-breakfast, resort, motel or other accommodations, we've prepared our Pacific Coast Highway Hotels Guide ebook. In it we do mini-reviews of accommodations along the Highway, from Seattle to San Diego, through Washington, Oregon, and California.
For the 2011 edition we added new hotels, including a special 50-hotel section covering California’s wine country of Napa, Sonoma, and Paso Robles - by far the most popular diversion from the PCH drive. In all there are over 200 hotels listed, complete with 8 pages of color maps showing the towns where our recommended hotels can be found. There are both alphabetical and geographical indexes, helping you plan your journey.
KINDLE EDITION The Hotels Guide is also available but without the maps and color photos in the US Kindle Store for $4.99 and in the UK Kindle Store at a price based on the US price.