Time for the judgement of Paris

Fancy a weekend in the French capital? Who doesn't? But with so many options available, the UK traveller may find it difficult to decide which company to travel with. Simon Calder compares the travel deals on offer in terms of fares, time and distance.

Time and money. As in life, so in travel – those are the two variables held in highest regard. Much as you may regret the relegation of love, peace, understanding, etc, for the purposes of getting to our favourite travel destination – Paris – time and money are of the essence. The long-term trend, I am happy to report, is for the journey to be quicker, and to cost less – from almost anywhere you start in Britain. But with such a multiplicity of options, which provides the best deal to the UK traveller? That is what The Independent set out to discover, with the first comprehensive survey that considers journey time, fares and distance to find the best – and worst – value to the French capital.

We looked at the best-available fares for a long weekend from 12 UK cities, and a total of 18 airports, a bus station and a rail station, for travel out to Paris on Friday 19 July, returning on Monday 22 July. Because fares can fluctuate, we took a snapshot, conducting the raw research on one day: Monday 17 June. Some individual fares may now be lower, but as the departure date approaches most prices tend to rise. As with all fares quoted in the travel pages of The Independent, all pre-payable taxes are included.

To define the time taken, we looked at all non-stop flights between the UK and Paris. We took the schedulers' word for the flight time, and estimated the overall journey from city centre to city centre. We selected the fastest means of public transport to the airport, and allowed a one-hour check-in time. For Eurostar, the check-in time is 30 minutes.

The French connection was easier; all flights, apart (predictably) from Ryanair's, touch down at Charles de Gaulle airport. We assumed an arrival gate-to-Gare du Nord time of one hour – you will be carrying only hand luggage, won't you? For rail and bus travellers, the starting stations are defined as the city centre, as is Gare du Nord (with just a hint of générosité). In-flight catering is taken into account – fares on the no-frills airlines Buzz, easyJet and Ryanair, and on Eurolines buses and Eurostar trains, were given a £5 handicap because of the absence of free food and drink on board.

Once the research has been done, the arithmetic proves simple. An appealing quantity is the time for the outbound journey in hours multiplied by the return fare in pounds. But because Glasgow is more than twice as far from Paris as is London, the distance from each city is taken into account, too. The arbiter for this figure is the timetable provider OAG Worldwide, which measures the distance as the crow flies. Travellers on Eurostar, for example, or people who fly from London using Luton airport, will cover longer distances.

The speed-time/distance figure helps to level the playing field. This yields the most significant quantity, shown in the table and on the map as the value score. For all the calculations, the lower the figure the better.

Every traveller's circumstances are different, and few of us live adjacent to a city-centre bus or train station and wish to go precisely to Paris Gare du Nord. But for the first time, this survey highlights the wide variations from one part of the country to another.

And the winner is... Ryanair from Glasgow. Well, sort of. The no-frills airport uses the secondary airports of Prestwick in Scotland and Beauvais in France, both of which take longer to reach than the main gateways. But neither British Airways or Air France offers non-stop flights between the two; each airline makes an the additional stop, which makes the overall journey times comparable. Ryanair's relatively low fare of £92 (including a notional £5 for food and drink), combined with the long distance, helped the Irish airline to top place.

Eurostar from London Waterloo ran a good second, thanks to its generous summer fare of £59 (terms and conditions apply) and the fact that times are calculated to its terminus in Paris. Third place goes to easyJet from Liverpool, benefiting from a comparatively low fare (£119, including a snack allowance). Among the traditional airlines, the best performance was from Edinburgh on Air France and from Manchester on British Airways. The north-west of England does well, while cities in the north-east perform poorly – travellers from Leeds and Newcastle get a worse deal than those from Liverpool and Manchester. In the west, a passenger in Newport would probably opt to go to Cardiff rather than to Bristol for a good-value flight to France. The train via London is another possibility, but First Great Western declined to quote fares unless we promised to make a booking – so the company is omitted from the survey.

Easily the highest and "worst" score is from London City Airport on Air France, but for many of the passengers using the capital's closest-in airport, time is more important than money. Reducing the check-in time to 20 minutes, which is allowed at the Docklands airport, would make the score a lot more favourable.

One variable that is difficult to quantify is hassle. Many travellers opt for Eurostar trains to reduce the hurdles to be cleared. A traveller from central London flying on easyJet from Luton to Paris must take a train, a bus from the airport station to the airport, the plane itself, another bus and another train – not conducive to relaxation.

The fastest journey was from Southampton, with a 10-minute rail link from the centre and a quick flight to Paris. The slowest (apart from the bus) was Ryanair from Glasgow, but low cost and long distance earned it first place.

Research by Marise Dunlop-Stewart and Fiona Guy