As the semester begins to wrap up it is now the time to figure out how to make it to the airport to return home. Georgia Tech-Lorraine provides shuttles from our campus to the airport if there are enough students going to a particular airport, but this isn’t guaranteed. The Brussels airport and Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris typically have shuttle service provided.
What is one to do if there isn’t shuttle service provided? Well the first thing that you need to worry about is getting to the city where your flight leaves from. So if you are leaving out of Luxembourg Airport at 8 am, you should try to get to the city a couple of hours before your flight, allowing an hour to get from the city-proper to the airport.
One way to get to the airport is to take a train. We have been taking trains all summer so this should feel like an old hat at this point. After you are in the destination city, give yourself an hour or so to get from the train station to the airport. You can take a bus or a metro is one is available. In Paris I find that the metro is the fastest option, but in Luxembourg you will have to take a bus.
But what if you cannot get the train reservation you want or there aren’t any trains that get you there early enough? You have the option to get to the city a day early and stay at a hostel until the next day, but that isn’t always ideal.
Another method is to take a shuttle from Metz to the airport directly. Flibco is a shuttle service that will pick you up near the train station and drive you to many predetermined airports. I personally have taken Flibco from Metz to Luxembourg airport, and when you buy your tickets early enough it is really cheap — my ticket was only 5€. The only issue with this is that the shuttles can run at odd hours. For instance, my shuttle left Metz at 2 am on a Sunday, and the buses don’t run that late, so I just took a taxi.
This information is helpful for most people for the return trip home, but it also applies for any planes that you are trying to catch during the summer.