Seeking the wisdom of the Flist

[intertext]

Especially those familiar with London airports...

I've booked a ticket to Venice from London leaving at 7:25am from Gatwick - I had all kinds of sensible reasons for doing this, but now am having second thoughts. Is this technically feasible? (I know that the first Gatwick express from Victoria leaves at 4:30, and they run every half hour thereafter). My hotel is near Earls Court station. I guess what I'm asking is how sticky are they about the time ahead - how risky is it to be later than two hours ahead of time. It's probably easier to rebook a hotel nearer to Gatwick for my last night than to try to change my airline booking (it's British Airways). And is the Gatwick express the best/fastest way to get there from where I am?

Thoughts?

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

The two hours is recommended rather than a hard limit, isn't it? I've certainly on occasion arrived at airports with less time to spare (I draw a veil over the time in Barcelona when I found I had lost my passport as we were packing to leave). Particularly if you check-in online in advance it shouldn't matter if you're there a bit later.

The Gatwick Express is certainly the best way to get there from Earl's Court - and get a minicab from there to Victoria.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

The two hours is recommended rather than a hard limit, isn't it? Yes, but sometimes you really need that much time (like at Charles De Gaulle) and at others (like Victoria, ha ha), you could get away with twenty minutes. I've never flown out of Gatwick, so I wondered how busy it was likely to be.

[arcana-mundi.livejournal.com]

Just as an aside, I've flown in and out of Roissy (the short/common/familiar name for CDG) six times in the last six months, and while there's often a bit of a slog going through customs on the inbound, I've never had it take more than 30-40 minutes from arriving at the terminal to making it to my gate on the outbound.

Orly, on the other hand, is made of PURE EVIL.