NYC to Sardinia: how to actually get there.

The three airports that matter

• Olbia (OLB), the north. Costa Smeralda, the Gallura coves, La Maddalena. Fifteen minutes from the first marina, under an hour from most of the rooms I use. This is the answer for four out of five storylines I write.
• Cagliari (CAG), the south. The widest choice of connections and the steadiest year round schedule, but two and a half hours by road from the north. Right when your week is the southern coast, the Carignano wine country and the Barbagia.
• Alghero (AHO), the northwest. Small, quick to clear, the natural door to Asinara and the Bosa coast. Thin schedules outside summer.

One rule: fly into the end of the island your first three nights are on, even when the fare is worse. A cheap arrival that hands you a two hour transfer at 9pm is not a saving.

Nonstops from New York, and what they really buy you

There is no nonstop from New York to Sardinia in any season, and I do not expect one. What is seasonal is the transatlantic leg. From roughly late May to late September the summer schedule opens more nonstops out of JFK and Newark into Rome, Milan, Naples and Lisbon, and that is what makes a same day arrival on the island possible.

Outside that window the hub list shrinks to Rome, Milan, Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich and Lisbon, and the island legs thin out with it. In April and October I plan a night in Rome or Milan into the trip rather than fight a tight morning connection. It reads like a detour and behaves like a rescue.

The one-stop routings I actually book

• JFK to Rome Fiumicino to Olbia. My first choice. The overnight lands early, the island hop is 55 minutes, and there are several of them through the morning, so a missed connection costs two hours instead of a day. Leave at least two hours in Rome: you clear immigration and change terminal there, not in Olbia.
• JFK or Newark to Milan to Olbia. The best fallback when Rome is weather bound. Check which Milan airport the onward leg uses, because Malpensa to Linate is a road transfer, and I will not connect you across it under four hours.
• Newark to Lisbon to Olbia or Cagliari. Longer on paper, and in shoulder season often the most comfortable business cabin for the money. Lisbon immigration can be slow, so three hours minimum.
• JFK to Zurich or Munich to Olbia. The quiet option in August, when the Italian hubs are saturated and every delay compounds. Fewer island frequencies, so this one wants a midday onward leg, not an evening one.
• JFK to Rome, the fast train south, then the ferry. Only when you want the crossing to be part of the story, or when you travel with a lot of luggage. It is a full travel day. I propose it rarely, and never on a five day week.

One thing worth paying for: a single ticket for the whole journey, or at least both legs on partner airlines. Two separate bookings means a missed island hop is your problem, not the airline's, in the one week of the year you cannot afford it.

Arrival timing, the part that decides your first day

Land in Olbia before 1pm and day one is a real day: lunch by the water, a swim, an early dinner, asleep by ten and on local time by morning. Land after 7pm and day one is a transfer and a room. On a seven day week that is a seventh of your trip.

• Leave New York on a Thursday or Friday evening and arrive midday. Weekend island legs are fuller and far less likely to be re timed than the Monday morning bank
• Keep day one soft on purpose. No boat day, no long drive, no hard reservation. The first booked thing is dinner twenty minutes from where you sleep
• Fly the island leg home in the morning and cross the Atlantic in the afternoon. An evening hop into an overnight is where good trips end badly
• Never book the last onward leg of the day. If it goes, you sleep at the hub

The last hour, from the plane to the door

Olbia is a small airport with a short walk from gate to curb, and in July it can still take forty minutes to collect a rental car. I meet arrivals with a driver instead and bring a car in on day two or three, once the week actually needs one. On the coast a car mostly finds you a parking problem. Inland, in the Barbagia, it is the whole point.

When to fly

My favorite weeks are late May to mid June, and the second half of September. The sea is warm, the light is long, and the island has not filled with August's domestic holiday. I open the season in late April and close it in early November. I avoid the middle two weeks of August, and I will say so rather than sell you into them.

Sardinia next to Amalfi, for the same week

The Amalfi Coast is a 50 mile road shared with thousands of day trippers. Sardinia is an island the size of Sicily with a fraction of the visitors, where a private boat, a shepherd's table and a village festa are all reachable inside one week. If you already know Capri or Positano, Sardinia is the next chapter, not a comparison. The extra connection is the price of that, and it is the cheapest thing about the trip.

Read a week that starts this way

• Coves of the Gallura, seven days from a midday Olbia arrival
• Maddalena to Asinara, nine days, in through Olbia and out through Alghero
• Inland Barbagia, five days, the one week where the car earns its keep