Swiss Air is asking for 2.5 hours but is this a hard requirement?
TIA.
We have a very early flight from Geneva. We have only hand baggage - how much time should we give ourselves?
2.5 hours, perhaps if you are checking a bag. Depending on your destination and the need to check documents like PLF, Corona Certificate and visas I would say an 1-1 1/2 hours. If you are going to Zurich then 45 m to an hour.
Get through security as soon as you can as this can be a bottleneck, particularly first thing in the morning.
Have you submitted the necessary covid documents (certificate, any required entry forms etc) online, up to 12 hrs before? If you have done this and checked-in online, the boarding pass that is generated should have a valid barcode and you will be fine with much less time (whatever you might have previously allowed when travelling w/only hand luggage (everyone has their personal comfort margin)
2.5 should be about right... not much experience with GVA but I recently flew from ZRH during the week before noon. I am quite pragmatic and always try to be 1-1.5 hours before boarding but imagine my surprise when I saw hundreds (sic!) of people queuing to a safety check. No clue what happened that day but by the time I got to the gate, the first people were already boarding.
Check how many departures are at a similar time to yours and plan accordingly.
Not sure if you have to go to check-in these days if hand luggage only. I had an experience where they weren't giving boarding passes with online check-in because they needed to check Covid docs.
If you get a boarding pass when you check-in online, I'd say 1.5 hours before departure. No boarding pass, then 2 hours.
Geneva is not Zurich.
Depending on your destination you can upload the information beforehand and then you will get a proper boarding pass, avoiding having to queue at check in.
Don't forget the 2.5 hours is the airline covering their ***. If for whatever reason you're not on time at the boarding gate, it's your fault, not theirs.
But, wow are you traveling to the airport? Train, taxi? When I use the train I choose a departure time that accounts for any missed train connection. 4 min connections and having to take another train far away while pulling 2 hold bags + cabin one is quite stressful. So, 1.5 hour lead time + 30-40 min to account for missed trains is already 2 hours.
Last vacations I started using mobility one-way. But, could reserve the car to leave it at Basel-Mulhouse airport, only up to Basel HB. since GE airport is closer to city center maybe it's easier to leave it there. Anyway, it's simple to get the mobility car the night before, load all the luggage in the car and just drive early next morning. You have to wake up early anyway to account for traffic. But at least not pulling luggage like a mule in buses and trains while being worried about missing the next train.
Breaking news: they are bankrupt.
In other news, having not flown with Swiss for a while I was surprised they've started charging for coffee.
And Crossair assumed many of their routes, aircraft and staff rebranded themselves as SWISS International Air Lines. About the only thing they didn’t assume was the two letter code SR. They retained Crossair’s LX code.
IATA is still reserving the SR code so maybe they know something we don’t. The building they are in at Geneva airpirt is still called the Swissair Centre!
If GVA is like Zürich you can see the time to go through security in real time on the airport website per departure. Maybe check similar flights as yours a few days running in advance to work out the average waiting time.
Flew out to UK first thing Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago from ZRH with hand luggage and arrived at the airport approx 55 mins before my flight and had plenty of time to get papers stamped & grab a coffee before boarding.
Since COVID it takes a looooong time. Early in the morning you’ll probably go a bit faster but with all the document checks we did over three hours in Zürich in July.
They have fresh brewed coffee now which you have to drink through filter. And their sandwiches are delicios (I would say, much better than an average meal you can eat in German part of Switzerland).
And expensive
Well. We paid about 40 CHF for the family and I had no impression that the price / quality ratio was too high, unlike to what I feel when I pay 17 CHF for kinder portion of chicken nuggets and French fries in a mountain restaurant.
Geneva is not Zürich.
(is there an echo in here?)
Geneva is a small and convenient airport.
If it's an early flight and you have already checked in. You need perhaps 10 min to pass security and get through the gate, 20 min if there are a lot of people like it happened to me recently on a saturday.
In good old days (read: when I was younger so much younger than today, and never needed...) I counted that the time required between a doorlock of my apartment and arriving at the gate was exactly 75 minutes. Bus no 5 in front of the apartment. Which (normal) airport in the world can beat this?
It all worked fine number of times until one Saturday morning when they had special fiver going only to Palexpo, not all the way to the airport.
Of course, had to purchase a new ticket for subsequent flight...
I flew from Geneva a week ago. Security was practically empty. I also had only hand luggage and i arrived at the airport an hour and a half in advance because im paranoid about being late. The way i see it its that is better to wait at the airport than wait at home.