Short answer: for a morning flight, leave central Saint Petersburg two and a half to three hours before departure. You should be at the airport two hours ahead, check-in closes 40 minutes before the flight, and the drive to Pulkovo on a weekday morning takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half — the spread depends entirely on whether you hit the rush hour on Moskovsky Prospekt or beat it.
Before 6:30 the city is empty, after 7:30 it is an hour in traffic
At night and in the early morning the trip from the centre to Pulkovo takes 25–35 minutes: Moskovsky Prospekt and Pulkovskoye highway are free. From about 7:30 the weekday jams build up, and by 8:30 the same route stretches to an hour or more — the whole south of the city funnels towards the airport highway. The practical rule: for a flight before 9 am, be on the road before seven; for flights between 10 and 12, allow a full hour and a half for the drive.
Photo: Artyom Svetlov, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
The metro opens at 5:30 — and still does not take you to the terminal
There is no airport express train to Pulkovo. The standard public route is the metro to Moskovskaya station, then a city bus to the terminal — an hour to an hour and a half from the centre with a transfer. For a 7–8 am flight the metro physically cannot make it: the first trains run at 5:30–5:45, and that is roughly when you already need to be at the airport. That leaves a car — and it is better booked the evening before than hailed at five in the morning.
Photo: Bestalex, CC0, Wikimedia Commons
