Originally Posted by
davidjohnson6
About a week ago, I flew from an empty beach airport in Europe to Gatwick at lunchtime - doors were closed over 35 mins (yes, really) before scheduled departure time, captain verbally acknowledged on PA that everything was in order, but there was still a 20+ min delay before pushback / engine start... the aircraft reached its stand 15 mins before scheduled arrival time
Some airlines do have internal policies that do not allow them to leave earlier than 10 minutes before their planned EOBT. Although it is possible to do so, yes, even more than 15 minutes, recently did it more than 2 hours before the flight plan was filed (in error i might add), it just took the local ATCO to activate the flight plan earlier.