I commute weekly from CGN to LGW and have been doing so for the last 15 months or so; previously I've also commuted to EDI from LON, so here's my EUR .02 on the subject...
(Both are/were typically about 4 hours door-to-door, so broadly comparable with what you're considering.)
Originally Posted by
ed209
- How much before your flight do you arrive at the airport. Doing my holiday 1.5 hour wait twice per week would be a pain!
I commute with easyJet (U2), so I tend to rock up to the airport about 60 minutes in advance in order to get a good seat. I'm planning on reducing that once they start with assigned seating in November. Time needed depends very much on the airport though and I can imagine that AF at CDG can be a bit messy.
- Do you have to book flights individually or can you block book, like a travel card?
I block book two or three months' worth in advance typically. U2 let me put 20 or so flights on one itinerary, which saves me paying them a booking fee for each flight and means I average out at about £30-35 per segment all-in. Your mileage will vary by airline, but it'd be worth you checking if any bearable (i.e. not FR) low-cost airlines fly the route you're after. (Also YMMV if you don't have to pay for your flights yourself
)
- How bad is a commute like that? Does it get you down? Is the time away from kids productive for sorting out other things?
I don't mind commuting to London as I have lots of friends there so I use the evenings to catch up with them, plus I'm typically working long days there in any case. But I do miss my wife of an evening.
When I commuted to Edinburgh, it did get me down a bit -- I didn't know many people there and the winters get pretty dark...
Don't have kids so can't comment on that other than to note that when I was a little kid in the 1970s, my father commuted from London to Canada fortnightly for two years; by the end of that, I hardly knew him (and my mother was about ready to divorce him).
The flip side is, how much do you actually see of your kids after work now? I don't know how old they are but a colleague of mine who commutes EDI-LON and has fairly young kids pointed out to me that even if he worked in EDI, by the time he'd get home, his kids would be in bed anyway.
- Is it better to fly early before work like 6am or last thing at night and go the night before?
Depends on your flight timings and costs, whether you're a morning person, and whether commuting out the night before costs you time with your family/kids. I quite like commuting Monday evenings for a Tuesday morning start, but the disadvantage is that if my flight is running badly late I get to my flat past midnight and then have less than 6 hours' sleep before I need to get up. On the plus side, I'm not getting up at sparrow's flatulence in order to go to the airport.
Also bear in mind that the time difference between BHX and PAR means that even if you take a 7am flight, it won't get in to PAR before 9.30-10ish am, which may make you late for work, especially if delayed.
All in all, whether commuting works for you or not will depend a lot on your individual circumstances, i.e. your family, airports and airlines involved, days of the week, cost, etc...