Originally Posted by
ed209
I'm considering a position in Paris. I live not far from Birmingham. There are multiple daily flights although I'd be in Paris 3 days per week, tue to thurs or something.
Having worked from home for many years I'm a bit nervous about taking on that commute.
Some things I'm wondering:
- 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!
- Do you have to book flights individually or can you block book, like a travel card?
- How bad is a commute like that? Does it get you down? Is the time away from kids productive for sorting out other things?
- Is it better to fly early before work like 6am or last thing at night and go the night before?
Thanks for any advice!
I used to fly out of BHX pretty regularly for work, getting either an early flight (7am) or an evening one (8pm). For the early flight I would generally aim to be parking the car by 6am – security can be pretty busy as there are a lot of morning commuter flights. That was without bags but I rarely saw a queue for bag drop at that time of the morning as most of the business travellers seem to go carry-on only. In the evening, on the other hand, security was a lot quieter but the people who were flying were all taking bags so you’d queue to drop your bag. I generally found arriving about 6.45/7 for an 8pm flight to be OK though (and DH and I once rocked up at 7.40 for an 8.30 flight and still made it absolutely fine). But as somebody else says, start early and shave off time as you feel comfortable.
Would you be getting an apartment in Paris? If so, my advice would be to take as much stuff as you can over the first few times to enable you to mainly travel hand luggage only after that, as reclaim at Birmingham is sloooooooow (especially from Flybe flights, IME).