Which London airport is cheapest to fly into from Palanga?
Lithuania's coastal airport reaches three London airports, and the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive of them is the biggest saving on the whole journey. We price all three routes on a schedule; here is what each one costs, month by month.
Palanga is small, but it still gives you the London choice that matters.
Palanga's airport sits a few kilometres north of the resort town and about half an hour by road from Klaipeda, and it is easy to assume that an airport this small means driving inland to Kaunas or Vilnius for any serious fare hunting. London is the case where that assumption fails. From Palanga we measure routes into three London airports: Ryanair flies to Stansted, airBaltic sells fares into Gatwick, and SAS and other network carriers price itineraries into Heathrow. The spread between those three is wider than anything you gain by changing your travel month on any one of them.
The charts below show the lowest fare we measured on each route in each month, with the date we saw every figure. Read the three headline numbers first: that is the real cost of treating "London" as one place.
Stansted, the cheap route
Ryanair's direct route holds the lowest floor on the page in every measured month.
Stansted is where the cheap seats from Palanga go. The floor is at its lowest in mid autumn, holds through winter at a small step above that, and the near-term summer weeks are several times the winter level, so this is a route that rewards booking weeks ahead for the cold half of the year. It is also the only one of the three we can call a simple product: one airline, one direct hop.
Each figure shows the date we measured it.
Gatwick, the floor that never moves
airBaltic's fares hold one level from autumn all the way to late spring.
The Gatwick chart is the strangest of the three and the easiest to use. The same lowest fare repeats from October through May, eight months without a move, with only early summer a shade above and the near-term weeks well above. There is no cheap month to hunt for here: any month in that long flat stretch is as good as any other, so book when your plans are ready rather than waiting for a dip that does not come.
The same months, measured on airBaltic's fares into Gatwick.
Heathrow, the expensive one
Network-carrier itineraries at the highest floor of the three.
Heathrow holds the highest floor of the three across the autumn-to-spring months where the cheap seats live, and its cheapest fares belong to SAS and other network carriers whose itineraries route through their own hubs rather than flying the coast-to-London line directly. What Heathrow gives back is the arrival: it is the closest of the three to central London, the Elizabeth line reaches town in about 35 minutes, and the Piccadilly line does it for an ordinary Tube fare. From Palanga that trade almost never wins on money; take it when the schedule or an onward connection makes it win on something else.
Fewer measured months than the low-cost route; the fares are itineraries on network carriers. Each figure shows the date we saw it.
The season, read across all three charts
Put the three charts side by side and one pattern crosses all of them: the cheap half of the year runs from October to March, on every route, whichever airline flies it. That is London's own seasonality showing through, not any airline's pricing quirk, and it means a coast-dweller with flexible dates should think of a London trip as a cold-season trip first and pick the airport second.
The airport choice matters most exactly when the season is against you. In the cheap winter months the three routes sit closest together, so picking the wrong airport costs you the least. In the near-term and summer months the gaps stretch wide open, and the difference between the best and worst choice grows to several times the winter fare. If you have to fly in the school holidays, that is when reading the charts pays most.
One more practical note on comparing them: the cheapest fares on all three routes are hand-luggage fares, and what each airline lets you bring free differs. Check the bag rules on the ticket you are actually about to buy before declaring one route the winner, because a paid bag can be worth more than the fare gap.
How to use this
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01Default to Stansted, and book the cold months aheadIt holds the lowest floor in every month we measure, cheapest in mid autumn and winter. The express train into London takes about 50 minutes and costs real money, so count it in both directions.
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02Use Gatwick when your dates are fixedIts floor is identical across eight measured months, so a fare near it is a fair price whenever you fly. Trains reach Victoria and London Bridge in about half an hour, a shorter and usually cheaper transfer than Stansted's.
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03Do not drive inland before checking these chartsThe three-hour drive to Kaunas or Vilnius only pays if the fare gap covers the fuel, the parking and the hours. Compare the floors above with the same three-airport comparison from Vilnius before deciding the coast cannot compete.
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04A floor is not a quoteEach figure is the cheapest fare we saw for that month on the dates we priced, with the day we saw it. Use it to judge the price on your screen, not as a promise.
Once you have picked the airport, the London guide covers doing the city itself cheaply, and the same comparison exists from Riga if the northern route map suits your dates better.
