I travel a lot. Not as much as a lot of business travelers, but maybe in the top 1% for independent travelers. That means that I spend a lot of time on planes, in airports, and experiencing just about every air-travel scenario possible.
People get to airports ridiculously early in fear of missing their flights. I almost never get to the airport more than forty-five minutes before my flight departs, and have only missed three flights in that time. One was because I had bad information on how long it took to get to the airport, another was because the guy driving the canoe to the airport stayed up all night doing cocaine and then slept in, and the most recent was because I forgot I had switched my flight to an earlier one. I’ve never missed a flight when I got there forty-five minutes early.
Now, this only applies if you don’t check bags. If I can travel for months on end with a half-empty nineteen liter backpack, I’m sure that you can travel for any duration with the largest-allowed carry-on.
Check in for flights generally closes an hour before the flight takes off. Sometimes this is a soft deadline and you can actually check in later. It’s best, however, to check in online twenty-four hours before your flight. Almost every airline in the world allows this, and you can choose a good seat.
If you can’t print your boarding pass and can’t get an electronic boarding pass, you can get one printed at the airport even if you miss the check-in cutoff. There’s no printing cutoff. However, it’s always better to print in advance if you can, because sometimes bag-checkers will be clogging up the checkin line. If you get there late, like I do, that’s usually not a problem.
Boarding for flights begins forty-five minutes to half an hour before the scheduled departure time. They can get angry at you for coming in late, but can’t deny you boarding unless you show up less than fifteen (domestic) or twenty (international) minutes before the departure time.
The PA announcements will announce boarding, and then final boarding. Final boarding is a sham, as you still have plenty of time after they call it. They will always call your name individually before closing the gate. Even then, you can ignore it unless it’s 15-20 minutes before departure time. But if they’re calling your name, that probably means they’re ready to take off once you get there, so it’s a nice thing to show up and help the flight leave early.
Sometimes people are worried that they will miss their flight because they’ll get to the airport early and lines will be too long. This is not a valid concern. If you are at the airport 45 minutes early and don’t have checked bags, you’re going to make it. If you’re cutting it anywhere near close, you can cut security lines. Just go through the priority lane and say, “I’m about to miss my flight– can I go through?” They will always let you do it. I’ve only had to do this once or twice out of the hundreds of flights I’ve taken, though. This also works if another flight is clogging up the checkin line and you are about to miss the deadline or need your boarding pass printed.
I’m not sure why different lead times are recommended for international and domestic flights, but forty-five minutes works fine for both. If you are going to an airport like Hong Kong, where they require you to speak to immigrations on the way out, you might want to add five or ten minutes. But, again, you can cut those lines if you’re about to miss.
I really want to stress that forty-five minutes isn’t cutting it close. Average time to get through security is probably 10-15 minutes, so you have 10-30 minutes to sit at the gate and wait. I still don’t really like wasting that time, but it’s better than sitting there for over an hour, wondering why the airline said to get there two hours early.
If you have access to airline lounges (through Amex or Citibank AA Card, for example), you can actually waste less time by getting to the airport early. You go through security, and then go work in the lounge until exactly 20-25 minutes before your flight and walk to the gate.
If you’re a frequent traveler, you probably know this stuff already, but I’ve seen enough people needlessly running through airports like chickens with their heads chopped off to know that some people haven’t gotten the memo yet.
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Photo is looking down the main passageway in the biggest pyramid in Giza. Until I visited there, I didn’t even realize you could go inside.
I know what my next book is going to be about, and I’m going to write it on a cruise in April. Very excited to share more once I finished it. In case you haven’t read my latest book, Superhuman By Habit, you should check it out.
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