Flying from Glasgow airport after the summer holidays.

[MissCalamity]

Sorry the title of the post probably doesn't make much sense...
Have any English mumsnetters gone on a package holiday late August once the Scottish children are back at school?
Did you notice a huge difference in price or was it too much of a hassle to get to Glasgow?

We're based in Manchester & thinking of going abroad at the end of August 2018, the prices from Manchester are well over £2k for one week in the Spanish sun self catering. Changed to flying from Glasgow & it's almost £700 cheaper.

Driving up/ parking / potential one night hotel stay is probably £200, I don't know if all this would have worth it (especially coming home!)

So has anyone done this? Would you recommend it for the added travelling time vs savings?

We do this the other way round - fly from Manchester at start of Scottish holidays.i think it's well worth it, particularly if flight times mean you don't need a hotel.

Having driven from Glasgow to Manchester for the same reason, I can tell you it's a good four hours, assuming a clear road and no stops. Probably needed a tank and half of fuel in total. Whether you can be bothered with the drive back when you step back off the plane is something to consider. The M8/M74 upgrade is finally finished so that's should help with traffic times if you do it outwith rush hour.

In terms of parking, there are a couple of good car parks a couple of miles away and they have buses to drop you off at the airport door. The airport car park is very expensive and even short term drop off now charges you. Edinburgh is the same. There are travel inn type hotels in the airport estate. Or there are hotels in Glasgow city centre with an airport bus from Buchanan bus st, Queen St station and Central st. That's about £7 return if I remember rightly. Not sure where you'd park the car though.

We took the train the second time we did it to save money but the hanging around for hours was definitely not worth it.

If I'm honest, now I have a kid, I'd need to be saving a lot to make it worth my while.

We did it at spring bank half term lady year and saved over £1K - it was a bit of a pain at the start & end of the holiday but worth it for the saving IMHO

We have also flown from Edinburgh in Feb half term to save £££

I assume half term dates in Scotland are also different to England as flights always seem cheaper from up there?

The September weekend (west of Scotland only) is the last full fri-mon in the month and the October week is usually the second full week in the month. February half term can be either second or third weekend, depending on the council area. Easter hols are fixed at the first two full weeks in April. If Easter is outwith those dates, the kids win another couple of days off.

I'm definitely considering it for the savings, don't know if DP would be on board with the extra travelling.
The kids (8 & 4) would probably whinge but that's par the course!
Thanks for your experiences.

Flown from Glasgow a number of times at the end of August always been cheaper. Tend to plan holiday myself last time to Spain about 4 years ago cost us a grand for family of 4 - flights, self catering Accomodation, hire car and one night hotel in Glasgow.

Also flown into Edinburgh from Rome. That time we used the train flew out from Manchester and back into Edinburgh Saved us about £300 pounds and better flight time into Edinburgh.

We do it but we are between Manchester and Glasgow about equidistant. It saves us a lot of money but it is a long wait through the summer hols to get going.

We sometimes do this the other way round. It's a super easy but boring drive. What you ideally want to do is book a flight at stupid o'clock AM and drive through the night. Then no need for hotel stay, it's a quick journey and you don't lose a day of holiday due to leaving later as you all snooze on the plane then arrive usually with a reasonable amount of day ahead of you.
To be fair we are used to shifts so this works fine for us!
Last time, we booked a flight that left manchester at 0630 so left at midnight having napped for a few hours. Arrived in Florida and it was only about 10am.
Lots of reasonably priced long stay parking at the airport. If you book a hotel in centre of glasgow for night before a morning flight you have to account for rush hr traffic - it's not as busy leaving the city but actually getting out onto the M8 can be a real pain.

I've done it the other way round - driving from Glasgow area to fly from Manchester. As pp suggested already, driving through the night when the roads are quieter worked well for me.

If you do decide to do this, and stay overnight before your flight, it would be better to stay close to the airport in case there are roadworks or any accidents on the M8. I used to live close to the airport and that area can become gridlocked very badly and very quickly if there's any kind of problem on the roads around the airport.