How easy is it to get Athens Airport 7 am?

You have two options:

Bus
Taxi (or hired driver)

Bus is the cheapest but may be an issue depending on where you stay in Athens. Long ride with many stops and may not always be comfortable.

Taxi will pick you up at your location but will cost much more but it's the most convenient and quickest way to the airport.

Metro doesn't start running well after you need to be at the airport.

One option is to stay at the hotel across from the airport but tends to be expensive.

When we were in Greece, the air Bnb where we stayed arranged for a car service for airport arrival at 5 am for 7 am departure. There is a bus with very early departures but you would need to stay near where it departs I would think for that to work.

There is the X95 bus going all night from Syntagma square to ATH. Travel time is approx. one hour. Personally, I'd arrange a transfer with Welcomepickups or a similar company. We paid €40 for the transfer two years ago.

We used a taxi, arranged by the hotel, a few days ago, 60 euro. We arrived at the airport at 3:30 am. Worth it to not change hotels and just get up earlier, it was 30 minutes from near syntagma square.

I used Welcome Pickups twice in April including a 6:30 AM pickup to take me to the airport. Both drivers were professional and spoke fluent English. I paid about the same as a taxi

X95 Bus worked fine -- a little slow. We had a very early flight. Stayed in a hotel just off Syntagma Sq. Seems to me we caught around 5 am. Kind of an interesting ride at that time of morning.

https://www.hotelavra.gr/

No personal experience but this hotel gets a lot of positive comments here and has free shuttles from 3AM onward

Try to be at the airport at least 2 hours before departure, specialy if you have baggage to check in.
In the area of ​​the check-in counters there are machines to check in your luggage yourself (if they are in service!) and also to print your boarding pass

To get to the airport::

Either you take the X95 bus from Syntagma Square, the price is € 5.50
The stop is on the street that goes up to the parliament on the right side of Syntagma square (Othonos street). There are buses 24/24 - 7/7. From 4 am you will have a bus every 15 minutes.
Allow about 1 hour to go to the airport.

Or take a taxi (the yellow cars). It is a flat rate to go to the airport from the city center. Let the driver know that you know it's a flat rate, some drivers don't hesitate to charge more, sometimes with the complicity of the hotel if you ask the hotel to book a taxi for you.

If you are close to a main avenue or a taxi station you should have no problem finding a taxi.
The fixed price is 35€ between 5:00 and midnight.
Before 5:00 am it is around 52€ (for the night rate I am no longer sure at +/- 2€)

Starting from the city center (Syntagma and surroundings), early in the morning there should not be too much traffic, the taxi will take about 40 minutes to get to the airport

There are other private taxi services that you can prebook on the internet. I used welcomepickups sometimes to go to the airport at dawn and to avoid wasting time finding a taxi in the streets when I was in middle of nowhere in Athens.
Never had a problem. On the other hand it is about 15% more expensive than the yellow taxis

https://www.welcomepickups.com/athens/airport-transfer-book/

https://www.hotelavra.gr/ No personal experience but this hotel gets a
lot of positive comments here and has free shuttles from 3AM onward

The Avra ​​hotel shuttles do not leave from Athens, but from the port of Rafina

Thanks for all the great responses!

I did check on goo maps, and it seems to be 41 km from city center (maybe 25 miles). The hotel at the airport is Sofitel Athens Airport which is currently about 220 eu a night.

There seem to be some hotels in a cluster near the periphery of the airport (e.g. Athens Airport Lodge) which are more like 90-100 eu, but Goo Map says 3.5 miles and an 1:20 walking ... which I will not be doing in the middle of the night.

It sounds like best bet is to stay relative close to the airport in a quality place and get a taxi or get a hotel near the bus line.

RailRIder, with your criteria -- Hotel Avra seems to be a good choice for you.. https://www.hotelavra.gr Quallity place but it's half the price of Sofitel, or less. It's in the village of Rafina right by a beach, and the shady town square for a relaxead dinner the night before... hotel has a cafe also. Its FREE shuttle 24/7 takes about 25 minutes ... only requirement is to book the shuttle at the same time as you book a room (so driver can plan his schedule). As for your requirements for flight you must be IN line 2 hrs before 7 AM departure -- so that means arriving airport 5 AM = shuttle @4:30 am. This would seem to me to be the most stress-free & economical way to plan your last night. Take the x95 bus to the airport in late afternoon, with advance booking for Avra shuttle... get to hotel, check into room, have a last swim in greece, a taverna dinner ... back to hotel, stop at desk for checkout paperwork, then upstairs for restful early night. Job done.

The Avra ​​Rafina hotel and its free shuttle is a solution, it is quite good, I was there last spring and I used the shuttle.
It's convenient for one night when taking a ferry from Rafina

Compared to a journey from central Athens it may save you a few euros in transport costs, but it's only going to save you a maximum of one hour of sleep,

You will have to pack your bags the day before, plan to be at the airport in time to synchronize with the departure of the Avra shuttle.
If you take the bus or the metro they will drop you off at the Departures level. So, go down to the arrivals level where the Avra shuttle is located (in the car parks near the bus stops).

I would never do that because I think that to save 30 minutes of sleep or a few euros it 's complicating your life considerably

I agree with Jolui. We stayed in Avra last May and while it was preferable to the airport (we had come from Meteora), it is much better to stay in Athens and just get up a little earlier. You would lose your last night in Athens moving there or anywhere else. .

In May we took a taxi from our hotel in Athens (near the Acropolis) to the airport. It was about 44 euros. Well worth it, IMO. Our hotel booked us the taxi the night before.

You never mentioned if you will be spending any time in Athens before your departure.

If not I would recommend staying in central Athens and enjoy the city. It's a lot more "Greek" than anywhere close to the airport and enjoy your last night in the birth of Democracy, great food, archeological/historic sites and just a better vibe than close to the airport.

Regardless of where you stay you'll still be getting up early so why not a bit earlier by staying in Athens and enjoy a wonderful city!

I just pulled the trigger on an open jaw flight going into Vienna and coming back out of Athens. I’m now planning about two weeks in Greece but the main thing I wanted to know for now was just if this was feasible. Based on all of your recommendations I went ahead and bought the tickets last night.

My plan is essentially to go from Vienna into the Austrian Alps, then the Italian alps and then work my way down Italy and then take a ferry from Bari or Brindisi into Patras. Then Athens, Thessaloniki, Napfil, then a few islands and back to Athens. I need to read some of the guide books including Ricks to formulate more of a plan. And also I’ve already been looking at some other commentaries on this form.

Does anyone know if it’s possible to do a day trip into Turkey without getting a visa or visit one of the Turkish islands if you’re on one of the Greek islands?

I guess we’re getting off topic here but as for the actual Greek isles it seems that most of the attraction is the beaches - which is not that important…. and the obligatory iconic Santorini - which looks like the Positano of Greece. Everybody seems to have more or less the same photos and they’re great photos but super touristy and expensive I imagine.

It is my understanding that you always need a visa for Turkey. They are only 20 euro -- I think.

Does anyone know if it’s possible to do a day trip into Turkey without
getting a visa or visit one of the Turkish islands if you’re on one of
the Greek islands?

If you go to the Cyclades islands it's impossible to make a day trip to Turkey or to a Turkish island.
It's too far.