I try to make it 1 hour before, and that's only because of bag drop off deadlines. I know plenty of light travellers that show up 15-30 minutes before departure, basically at gate close time.
(disclaimer: in the EU)
At some point I took a job that required significant travel, and I learned to cut things much closer. Usually not less than 45 mins. But if I’m flying internationally I’ll still show up at least 2 hours early.
Are you Sikh, by chance? If so, what do you do with that little knife you carry when you fly? I’ve never thought about that when I had the opportunity to actually find out.
Three hours is totally unnecessary but the asymmetric risk of missing a flight vs posting up with a beer and a gameboy tilts things toward an earlier arrival.
It's refreshing to travel from a regional airport though.
The punctuality of the trains is incredibly poor. And the chances are above zero to end up at a train station in the middle of bmfck nowhere.
Not my first time spending a night at Frankfurt Airport. But not within the comfy sterile zone after check-in... more like sitting in front of the small overpriced 24/7 supermarket.
Also we don't have good mass transportation. If you're in EU, Asia you can take a train and be pretty certain you'll get there on time (barring a big event). In the US...a crash on the interstate can wreck your day. A sporting event can cause huge traffic jams on the main arterial road. So I to leave my house early enough for the 2/3 hour "before the flight" to pad for that.
My recent international flights were out of Mexico, London, Hong Kong and security lines are short. I was expecting some kind of secondary check point (Having said that I recall flying out of Toronto and it was like Disney world line)
Anybody who listens to this either doesn’t travel much or is the sort of person who’d get there that early anyway. Unless I’m checking a bag (which means I’m going somewhere that I’m anticipating bringing a lot of stuff back) I lazily aim for an hour early and am closer to 45 minutes. I’d be even later but there’s substantial chance of random traffic between me and the airport I most frequently fly out of.
I’ve never overslept. It doesn’t matter.
So, my mental options are 1) give in, get up, take a leisurely trip to the airport without worries of an unplanned traffic slowdown, get through security, stroll to my gate to make sure I know where it is, then find a lounge and chill in relaxation knowing that everything’s fine, or 2) stress out that something might go wrong and make me miss my flight up and wish I’d left earlier.
I know me. I’ve done this plenty of times. This is my choice. So I go with the first every time: get there too early, then chill more than I possibly could if I were anywhere else. Either way I’m going to be up and moving. Why not use that time to radically de-stress my morning?
Doesn't matter, I'm wired the same way.
Late start, traffic, late shuttle, understaffed security, long lines, construction, gate moved to another concourse, gate moved to another concourse - if you put enough buffer time in the schedule, you can still make the flight.
It's probably still worth it, but just keep an eye on checkpoint wait times if your airport publishes them and don't just assume PreCheck means you can show up whenever.
I’ve talked to touring musicians who say they aim for 15 minutes before boarding.
I had a Turkey-China flights 3 months ago. I arrived at Istanbul international more than 3 hours early. Between all of what I described above, I arrived at my gate just 10-15 minutes before departure.
I am actually wondering about the lost opportunity cost to have these large expensive airports with all these shops and then leave passengers with no time to shop around.
The incentives for the airport are to be as cheap as possible, which they do by not having enough staff manning bagging/security et el for the peaks. Airports are a natural monopoly within an area so there isn't competition to loose out to, there is no where else for the planes and travellers to go and cities wont be putting down space for multiple airports to compete.
Because of the monopoly aspect it requires legal requirements for service guarantees to be laid out on the airports to fix this, without which the situation wont change and the risk will continue to lay with the customer for airport failures and they have little choice but to turn up early to mitigate the risk of the airport not having enough capacity. Its a system where all the companies are acting in their own best interest.
If it seemed to be the only possible reality, I wouldn't care.
But for flights that don't span water, my understanding is that it's almost certain that a train system is far superior.
(Emissions, weight&volume vs energy expenditure, and speed when accounting for loading/unloading and security).
ktallett•1h ago
nv-vn•1h ago
ktallett•1h ago
newAccount2025•52m ago
ktallett•46m ago
cosmicgadget•1h ago
jdietrich•54m ago
ktallett•41m ago
Fixing time wasted at an airport could be useful but it's not the biggest issue ever and I certainly wouldn't frame it as a GDP issue if we could fix it. More efficient for humans to do things they want to do with their time, not to do work instead.
Even trading time for money jobs, are not as clear as that, as often you produce far more money for the business than you get in return. So a simple addition of what your pay per hour is to the overall cost sum is still not accurate.
jltsiren•39m ago
But this is not a new problem. There are established models for the value of time in most countries, and they are used extensively when planning traffic and infrastructure. Typically the value of working time is based on the cost to the employer, while free time is valued between 1/3 and 1/2 of the nominal wage. As most trips (including commute) are done in free time, the average value of time is ~1/2 of the wage.
impossiblefork•35m ago
You actually become quite tired from this airport stuff, and even if you get back to the office the next day you'll be less productive.
ktallett•29m ago