London City Airport

[kirinm]

Flying from LCY in a couple of weeks for the first time. We live quite close by. Flight is 7:40am. What's a sensible time to make sure we are there by?

“we live close by”

that means bugger all

oh sorry i thought you were asking what time to leave!

id get there for 6

LCY is the quickest and easiest airport ever. Used to fly from there weekly. Hour and a half beforehand will be ample.

Actually I think I'd probably aim for an hour beforehand if you really want to save time.
I once turned up 10 mins before departure time after a taxi driver decided to go via the Blackwell tunnel. Assuming I'd missed it I went to the airline desk to rebook and they said 'oh you'll be fine if you run'.
I was!

Yes sorry, not sure why I added that but I do mean what time should I aim to arrive rather than leave my house which is an unspecified distance away.

For what it's worth, we are about half an hour away so aiming for 6ish means we don't need to wake our 5 year old until 5 which isn't too bad.

Even better although my anxiety would probably destroy me.

I’d be comfortable with 1h at LCY so would personally arrive 6:45. Do you have bags to check in? Then maybe 6:15 if you want to play it safe.

@kirinm

Which airline are you flying with? Am thinking about what the check-in time would be for the flight.

An hour is more than enough.

That airport is a dream to fly from/to. So easy and stress free.

They dont actually let you through until 2 hours (?) before and so you are often sent to wait outside. It is a tiny airport- a few minutes to get to gate and very fast in bag scanning

Agree with this

6.30 for LCY is ample! You'll be through security by 6.45! It's tiny and there is nothing much there, and walk to the gate will be minutes as well. DP regularly arrives 45 mins before and has time to shop ;-)

If you are south of the river I’d give yourself longer incase of tunnel closures or DLR problems, but north an hour is fine.

@TheSquareMile we are flying with BA

Hi neighbour, I'm a similar distance away, I love that airport!
Depends if you are checking bags in?
Two hours before if you are checking bags in, otherwise an hour and a half before if cabin bags only.

Are you checking in luggage? If so allow an hour plus 30 minutes just in case of journey problem - leave 2 hours before the flight basically. If not checking in luggage you could cut it 15 minutes finer. Also is it taxi, public transport, driving? You need to allow time to park if the latter, whereas with taxis they are not always on time!

LCY is the dream! Although when I flew from there the security scanners weren’t working properly and it actually took a bit of time to pass security. They are meant to have the new technology meaning you can take liquids on, but it was broken and so people had to put everything into plastic bags and they could only take 100ml again so a lot of things were getting thrown away too . So just bear that in mind!

I get really anxious about getting to the airport on time so thankfully I did give myself 1.5 hours, rather than the 45 minutes before that I had thought would be enough!

London city is super easy if you get there on time. If you have to go through the Blackwall Tunnel though, at that time in the morning BE WARNED. The only time I've ever missed a flight was due to the Blackwall Tunnel traffic. Once you're at the airport, security is super simple. You don't even have to remove your liquids anymore - they have different scanners. 15 mins check bags, 15 mins security, board 20 mins before takeoff from my experience. Don't buy a coffee before going through security as you won't be able to drink it fast enough.

We are SE. Bit wary of the comments re the tunnel!

@kirinm If you're going to worry about traffic - there is a Travelodge 5 minutes walk from the airport. Even though I live fairly close I have sometimes stayed there for convenience of not having to worry about transport for an early morning flight.