European City break - late departures from London

[Iamboudicca]

Trying to book a 40th birthday weekend with some friends to a European destination. Friends have suggested Lisbon, Ljubljana, Berlin etc but I am struggling to find a late enough departure time.

I don’t work Fridays but I am the only one of us with DCs and I therefore need to wait for my DH to get home from work before I can leave. I’m approx 45 -1 hour to Gatwick airport and a bit more to Heathrow. I can’t guarantee that DH will be home before 7, so realistically I can’t even think of a flight before 9 pm. I’m about an hour and a half from Kings cross too.

Any ideas of where has the latest departures on a Friday evening. (alas Paris and Dublin are not popular choices)

If you Google live departure board Heathrow/ Gatwick and can wait until next Friday you can check that way by looking at the live boards.

Is there no better option which would allow you to leave earlier though as leaving so late will not only severely limit your destination options, it will also limit your accommodation options as not that many places will allow check ins after midnight.

Remember with the time difference you would be arriving around midnight so many smaller airports have closed and hotels can be funny about checking in so late - can they not go to friends or have a sitter, perhaps a local teenager to cover the couple of hours

Also, on Skyscanner, if you select the date, departure airport, tick direct flights only and choose Everywhere as the destination, that will at least tell you what the destination options are with the cheapest listed first. You would need to click through on each one (open in new tab would be fastest) to see the times. Although I am on my phone so cannot check, I think that on a desktop computer/laptop you can also filter the search result by flight time, to save checking one by one.

www.skyscanner.net/transport/flights-from/lgw/190222/?adults=1&children=0&adultsv2=1&childrenv2=&infants=0&cabinclass=economy&rtn=0&preferdirects=true&outboundaltsenabled=false&inboundaltsenabled=false&ref=home

Good grief if you don’t work Fridays don’t waste a day whilst waiting for your DH. Book a childminder/teenager to pick them up
cook dinner and look after them until 7pm.
You need to send the kids to school and be on the next flight afterwards - realistically about 11am so you are there just after lunch. Go for a swim in the hotel pool, have a cocktail and a nap and wait for the others to arrive for dinner.

I am thinking of a sitter although it’s slightly awkward as only one of the DCs is at school, so ideally someone would need to be sitting DC2 and then go and do the school run with them in tow. Other friends have DCs at different schools ( so different school runs) or are working themselves.

I like your suggestion blue velvet so this needs to get sorted!

Barcelona used to have late departures from Gatwick. Some of my friends flew after work for a hen, they're teachers so couldn't take annual leave that day.

If you look on Travel Republic, you can select suitable take off (and landing) times. So you can select an evening take off - I use it to filter out the flights that arrive at midnight or set off back at 5 am.

Don't forget that you loose an hour traveling to continental Europe.

And southern Europe means around 2 - 2 1/2 hours flight.

Plus even if you leave the house at 7pm, there is no guarantee you make a departure at 9pm, most boarding starts at least 30-45 minutes before departure and you need to go through security.

I would ask your DH to take a day annual leave so you can go as early as possible.