Flying From Florida to Costa Rica | Guide to Cheap Airline Flights

If you are looking for cheap flights from Florida to Costa Rica, you are in for a pleasant surprise. The US State of Florida has the cheapest flights to San Jose hands down. In the US there is no other place that even comes close to offering the discount flights to Costa Rica that you will find from Florida.

If you happen to live in Florida, you can fly to San Jose for less than half the cost of many people in the US. It is so inexpensive and the flights are so short that you could decide to go for a weekend trip to a beautiful Pacific Coast beach and be back in time for work on Monday. Not many other people living in the US have that option other than Texas, which has good flight schedules to San Jose, but not the same cheap flights to Costa Rica like there are from Florida.

To get an idea of how good the prices of these flights are, try using a travel search engine like Travelocity or Mobissimo to search for flights out of Orlando or Fort Lauderdale to San Jose, Costa Rica. Now you are going to see some great ticket prices. Alright, to make you feel even better about those airline ticket prices, try the same travel search for Portland, Oregon to Costa Rica. Besides the much higher prices take a look at the travel times too. The travel time to fly from Florida to Costa Rica is 2 hours and 45 minutes. Living in Florida, you've got it made when it comes to flying cheap to Latin America.

The short answer to this is two discount carriers fly from Florida to Costa Rica. However, if you want to fly direct to Costa Rica only one discount flight exists out of Florida. Spirit Airlines have non-stop flights to San Jose Costa Rica out of their Fort-Lauderdale hub.

The other discount carrier flying out of Florida to San Jose is JetBlue Airways. However, your flight with Jet Blue first will take you all the way back to New York, then you will fly south to Costa Rica. Airlines all operate now using “hubs”. Sometimes they just seem illogical to me. This is one example of a flight plan that is not only a waste of the travelers time, but is more harmful to the environment. A direct flight with Spirit Air to San Jose is 2 hours and 45 minutes. With the JetBlue flight you'll have 2 hour and 45 minute flight to New York and then a 5 hour flight to Costa Rica. Just as you touch down in New York for your layover, you could have been landing in San Jose.

You can enter the airport codes to quickly search for flight prices when you are using a travel search engine. Here are the airport codes for the airports discussed in this article.

SJO is the airport code for Juan Santamaria International Airport in San Jose Costa Rica.

FLL is the airport code for Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

MCO is the airport code for the Orland International Airport.

Update: September 8, 2010

While doing research to update this article I stumbled across a great price out of Orlando on American Airlines for a Sept 22 departure to C.R. The price after taxes and fee's round-trip was only $250. This was with the travel search engine Travelocity. I don't know how many seats were available at that price, but it's a bargain while it lasts.

These average ticket prices are as of September 8, 2010 for flights booked two weeks in advance.

Note: The prices are after taxes and fees.

Spirit Airlines FLL to SJO $308 round-trip.

Continental FLL to SJO $555 round-trip.

Delta FLL to SJO $730 round-trip.

JetBlue MCO (Orlando) to SJO $505 round-trip.

***American Airlines MCO to SJO $250 round-trip*** Note: I haven't seen this price before, it probably is a temporary sale price.  I will update again in one week.