Airport hotel or early start?

[sammykitten]

As I'm the only driver, and I'm not an early-morning person, it depends how long the drive would take from home to the airport, building in contingency. If, for example, I had to get up and out of my house before 6am for a flight later that day, I'd only do that if the drive was a short one (ie less than an hour).

I generally sleep very well at airport hotels, and more often than not, when flying anywhere abroad, these days we stay overnight at a hotel near the airport.

[colin39]

Personally , 8 do use the m25 tho, i do hotel as i have nightmares of being sat at dartford river crossing watching my plane leave.
But perhaps thats just me.

[Guest]

Originally Posted by braby

We're 25 mins from LHR and 50 mins from both STN/LGW, usually try to get the earliest flight possible whenever travelling. We always travel to the airport on the day, I've worked at LHR for 20 odd years now so know quite a few diversions if the M25 has heavy traffic which helps, pklus family normaly drops/pick's us up.
Would much rather spend the money saved on something whilst we're away.

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I am trying to work out where could possibly be 25 minutes from Heathrow but 50 minutes from both Stansted and Gatwick. Drawing a blank so far.

[joanne42]

We live 50 mins from Gatwick,always stay night before.the thought of a hold up on m25 is too much.we normally go where poss on a Monday so have leisurely ride up to hotel on Sunday,then have time for a few drinks and relax holiday starts a day early

[scottsman]

Totally split and I have this dilemma when I fly to Australia, I’m a half hour bus ride away with the stop almost at my front door
It’s wasteful booking a hotel but at the same time covers you should anything go wrong and also makes an early start to the holiday, if you budget allows for it then go for it

[shack69]

Until last year we had always got up early and driven to the airport. But last year when i costed up parking and the option of statying the night before the diffrence was about £20 so we stayed over. Doing this we had no stress of potential motorway delays , but also all that making the beds , cleaning the loo, putting the rubbish out etc is done the day before and not in the morning. This makes it so relaxed.

[dreamadream]

Always plan to stay over, just not worth the risk, for he sake of like £40! Ten years ago we nearly missed a flight to Dublin as there was unannounced roadworks in route.
Last year however our nyc wasn’t til 4pm, we decided to drive down, despite living 90 mins away we left at 9am as my nerves couldn’t hold out. The whole journey I was panicking..5 hrs at the airport dragged...

[Billy Beatnik]

Raddison Blu too!

[GezzasGem]

We live less than an hour from Birmingham airport yet almost missed a flight to Orlando one year thanks to booked taxi being late then getting caught up in rush hour traffic heading to M6 - ended up diverting to avoid motorway and made check in with moments to spare - never again! Only bonus was our bags were on the carousel at Orlando way before anyone else's and we were driving away from airport before anyone else had left arrivals! 😄

[DreamDisney]

Originally Posted by vampiress88

I’m about 1.5hours away and my plane will leave at 10 so would be leaving at 5am. Surely that’s enough time even if something happens on the roads.

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No, sadly, when things happen on the roads there is just no telling how long the delay will be. It could be half an hour, it could be 3, or the worst I have seen here locally on the M5 was over 12 hours in the summer of 2017! Fuel tanker overturned just past the sliproad at about 5.30am, I think it was. Closed all three lanes. All had to be resurfaced, didn't reopen until about 10pm I think it was!

Traffic backed up all through down, and everyone tried to go another route to Bristol. Then there was an accident there. You could not even move through our town without severe delays that day, and some directions were completely out of the question as they were just blocked.

I saw a lady posting on an Orlando facebook group a few weeks back about being stuck in traffic on the M6 (I think), and they had already missed their flight because of it. They thought they had left enough time. They were wrong, sadly, so had to fork out for another flight the next day.

Accidents can cause absolute chaos. So, we are not risking that. Travelling up to Gatwick the day before, so even if we get stuck in traffic, and that's annoying, we won't be worried or stressing about missing the flight.