Super-commuting between Rotterdam and London

[Guest222]

It's doable.
Expect flight delays and passport control will be a pain - even if you have two passports, you need to use the same one for leaving one country as you use to arrive in the other.
Be prepared to pay for flight upgrades/flight changes to suit the times that you arrive early, or get delayed due to meetings or traffic.
If your contract is based in the UK, then just make sure your UK tax affairs are in order.
It may be worth while having a bike in both countries to allow cycling at both ends and potentially some spare clothes left in London, but be aware that a sunny morning doesn't mean a sunny evening.
Get something like a Tumi Alpha Bravo backpack so nothing goes in the hold. You can get a change of clothes into it along with computers, paperwork, travel plugs, power banks, etc

For the first few weeks, and when planes are on time, it can be OK. It gets very tiring very quickly, which will have an impact on your life outside of the trips. And then when you learn the big difference between the shortest possible time to get from home/office to plane and the normal/actual time it takes. So if you think you will finish work at 6pm and get a flight at 6.30, I'd book an 8pm flight as the normal one, then if I arrive on time for an earlier one, I pay for an upgrade.
You also learn to be the friendliest, politest, most helpful person when talking to the ticketing staff at the airport, and how to remove all metal/electronics from you as you run for security.

It is a useful way to keep your BA Gold card.

And then you'll start to refer to getting on a plane as boreding.

All flights are BA CityFlier from Rotterdam (small commuter airport), so it's more reliable than Schiphol for example. Looking at the recent flight history here for the flight I would get, it looks very reliable, arriving much earlier than scheduled all days in the past week except one where it was only 3 minutes late. The arrival time is 7am. To be fair, it could be 2 hours delayed, and I would still get to the office well before 10am which would be fine. In the event of a cancelled flight, I would just change my day in the office that week, or arrive later and WFH in the morning. Lots of options. But as long as it's mostly reliable, which it seems to be, then I think that's OK.

It's only one night, so I can be minimalistic on baggage (nothing in the hold). I travel a lot already - am quite efficient in security re metal/electronics, etc. And I can keep a lot of stuff in the London office in a locker.

But the BA Gold card is definitely something I noted as a plus point. This will make my journeys even more pleasant and efficient.

In general, I quite like flying regularly. I wingsuit as a hobby, so I tend to take about 10 very short 10-minute flights each weekend each of which requires manifesting and boarding procedures. Obviously, not quite the same as a commuter flight, especially as I land on a field with a parachute when skydiving, not on a runway in a plane as I would be when commuting. But my point is, I don't think I would be so averse to flying each week once I get into a routine and maximise the efficiency and utilisation of the time on my commute.

What I'm happy to see in the responses is that everyone replying has done this at some point - some good experiences, and some who don't miss it. But nothing saying, "what the hell, who would even get a plane to work?" That's kind of what I was looking for. I just wanted validation that what I was planning to do, especially with my young family, isn't stupid and something people would avoid like the plague (for reasons I may have missed).

Thanks everyone for the replies. Happy to hear more opinions/stories, though!

[Guest222]

Your last thread went south because you went over the top with the detail which did seemed to read that you've got a clear decision and then you ask what we would do and it was very clearly explained it's not point asking what we would do. It's your life, you've made it very clear it works so what are you trying to get out of the thread?

You'll get a lot of anecdotes that are no use to you, the thread is likely to go south because your inability to make a decision is striking and is this actually anything more than just waving your willy?

The reason this thread might go south is because, despite it going well up to now, you've decided to chime in with condescending comments and making remarks about my personality and intention, all of which are way off the mark. Because I've responded, it will result in you responding, and other long-timers here, causing the topic to go vastly off-topic, descend into oblivion, and result in the topic being closed... even though it was going just fine until you chimed in. It's a real shame, because no matter what people do on this forum, or what I do to just state my problem and keep to facts, this is how nearly every topic ends up going, and this is why barely anyone uses the forum anymore.

The replies were actually useful for the reasons I just stated in my previous reply. I completely disagree that I have an inability to make a decision. What I have is the ability to set out my choices on a forum, and then make a decision. I have had similar decisions to make throughout my 21-year career so far, and every time, I have successfully made a decision after lots of deliberation and pondering. That's a 100% hit ratio which is opposite to your supposition that I can never make a decision (0% hit ratio). From that perspective, you are 100% wrong in your assertion, but then you only have a microscopic view into the life of me or anyone else on here (just what they write), and not the entire picture which is typically more than 1 million per cent bigger than the view you have.

But thanks for now causing this topic to go south (again).

[WTFH]

What I'm happy to see in the responses is that everyone replying has done this at some point - some good experiences, and some who don't miss it. But nothing saying, "what the hell, who would even get a plane to work?" That's kind of what I was looking for. I just wanted validation that what I was planning to do, especially with my young family, isn't stupid and something people would avoid like the plague (for reasons I may have missed).

What you are seeing is that it's not a special case. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

I'm not factoring in family life, etc, because that's something you have to work out yourself. I used my points and gold card to take my wife away on holidays, or to take friends luggage when travelling - I'd book a ticket and get 64kg of luggage allowance, they would book no luggage, saving them money, and all the bags were checked in to me.

[ladymuck]

It's doable.
Expect flight delays and passport control will be a pain - even if you have two passports, you need to use the same one for leaving one country as you use to arrive in the other.

That's not true.

You can leave country A on passport 1 and enter country B on passport 2.

What you should not do is then leave country B on passport 1.

The difficulties arise if you need consular help as the UK Embassy will be reluctant to help you if you enter the country on a non-UK passport.

[ladymuck]

BA Gold card is utterly pointless at LCY

[Guest222]

What you are seeing is that it's not a special case. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

I'm not factoring in family life, etc, because that's something you have to work out yourself. I used my points and gold card to take my wife away on holidays, or to take friends luggage when travelling - I'd book a ticket and get 64kg of luggage allowance, they would book no luggage, saving them money, and all the bags were checked in to me.

Thanks. That helps. Given I can easily spend the occasional evening during the week working on business or other matters that require my attention resulting in me not spending time with the kids those occasional evenings (usually at least once a week), I can make the evening I spend in London that evening where I do those tasks that I would do anyway even if I wasn't super-commuting.

And yes, the BA Gold card will have lots of advantages like the ones you mentioned.

Cheers.

As an aside, I'm trying to search my previous posts, and it's very difficult. Given that I am posting exactly the same as I would under my other profile, can you please just delete this profile ('JasonP') and all topics associated with it, and re-enabled my other one? The outcome is identical - I'm posting on the forum. But administratively, it's making it difficult to search for my posts, and perform other actions. Also, this profile was only created to communicate with CUK(hence using my real name) whom I'm now communicating with via email, and was not intended to be used for posting. But the presence of my real name in the username is a problem, hence why it would be better to just have this profile deleted and my other one reinstated. It will kill two birds with one stone, and nothing will change in my ability to interact with the forum which was originally the purpose of the ban.

[lecyclist]

The reason this thread might go south is because, despite it going well up to now, you've decided to chime in with condescending comments and making remarks about my personality and intention, all of which are way off the mark. Because I've responded, it will result in you responding, and other long-timers here, causing the topic to go vastly off-topic, descend into oblivion, and result in the topic being closed...

In my humble opinion, the OP is using an approach common in European forums like englishforum.ch, whereas regulars on CUK are primed to detect socks, humble braggers, show offs etc.

JasonP appears to be a manifestation of the European mindset, and maybe he is just too sophisticated for Northeners to understand?

[Guest222]

That's not true.

You can leave country A on passport 1 and enter country B on passport 2.

What you should not do is then leave country B on passport 1.

The difficulties arise if you need consular help as the UK Embassy will be reluctant to help you if you enter the country on a non-UK passport.

This isn't an issue for me. I'm aware of the above for other trips because I have both UK and Mauritian passports. But for going between Holland and UK, I will always just use my UK passport and provide my Dutch residency permit at border control. This always results in a quick check both directions, and no stamp required.

BA Gold card is utterly pointless at LCY

Why?

In my humble opinion, the OP is using an approach common in European forums like englishforum.ch, whereas regulars on CUK are primed to detect socks, humble braggers, show offs etc.

JasonP appears to be a manifestation of the European mindset, and maybe he is just too sophisticated for Northeners to understand?

Dude, I was born and raised in the North of England. I'm from an old working class coal mining town, a tuliphole known as Wigan. I'm as northern as it gets. This isn't about culture, this is about me being factual to try and get information. I state my position on the forum. In return, I want information and opinions. I have zero interest in bragging (humble or otherwise) on the Internet. I'm waaaay past that schoolboy snowflake validation-seeking mentality that most Millennials and Zoomers have. But I'm also not like my fellow Wiganers (partly because I'm not genetically Wigan at all). I actually got a decent education whereas most of my fellow Wiganers work in factories, clothes shops and supermarkets (all the coal mines shut down a few years ago due to the lack of Internet down the mines, so the Zoomers couldn't check their TikTok account while chipping away at coal).

[ladymuck]

I will hazard a guess that you've never flown from LCY. There are no lounge facilities that an airline status member would expect to enjoy. You don't get discount on F&B in lieu of there being no lounge. Even the upcoming refurbishment of the departure lounge, which will turn it into a building site for months, will not provide those facilities.

You'll get Group 1 or 2 boarding but when travelling from an airport that's geared towards the business traveller, you will be just one of many with the same status and so this isn't a tangible benefit at all.

[Paralytic]

I did something similar in a previous professional services consulting role (but within the UK - between Edinburgh and London, usually LCY, but sometimes LHR) - it got tedious fairly quickly, even without the flight delays that would happen.

And I wouldn't trust those "how often on time" sites too much. eg, does landing mean on the runway, or the time you get off the plane? Sitting waiting for stairs to arrive typically is not included....

If it was for a short stint, i'd not rule it out, but its not something I'd want to do long term.