Flight delays get a lot of attention, and certainly mechanical and staffing issues are the fault of the airline. There’s also air traffic control which creates congestion – it isn’t just responsible for delays but also for longer flight times that get built into schedules. We don’t talk enough about that.
Maybe the biggest failure in air travel is something we don’t talk about at all. How is it possible that people are being told to show up at the airport 2.5 to 3 hours before their flight, and that isn’t considered a failure of massive proportions?
It happens to the best of us ✈️ unless you build in enough time
For arrival times: Flying domestically? We recommend arriving at least 2.5 hours early. Flying internationally? 3 hours early.
Tomorrow will be one of our busiest days, so please plan accordingly. pic.twitter.com/5PWWKsI9ZH
— Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (@AUStinAirport) October 3, 2024
The lengthened times for showing up at the airport mean that it no longer even makes sense for many people to take shorter flights, but aircraft technology (electric, short and vertical takeoff) is changing and becoming far more viable in the coming years so we should be thinking about that. The FAA is considering standards for vertiports but are we thinking creatively enough or will that conversation be too status quo-focused either because of regulator bias or because it’s entrenched interests most involved?
These are really important conversations and not just about convenience, although convenience matters more than we often give it credit for.
- In 2023, U.S. airlines carried around 819.3 million passengers on domestic flights across the United States.
- Airline passengers skew higher income, so let’s conservatively assume a $100,000 average income or $48.08 hourly wage.
Taking an extra two hours per passenger on average, that’s 1.64 billion hours, or $78.9 billion cost to the economy just for extra time wasted for domestic passengers.
And that’s only the extra cost of time wasted on departure. It doesn’t count delays on arrival,
- airlines forcing passengers to gate check bags, which sends them to baggage claim
- poor processes for baggage claim, that can delay bags for 45 minutes or longer
- buses to rideshare and rental car lots
Why do we simply accept showing up 3 hours before a flight, and taking an hour to get out of the airport, turning a two hour trip into 6 hours without even considering the time it takes to get to and from the airport?
We’ve turned airports into shopping malls, because airline passengers aren’t an airport customer they’re the product to be sold to. Longer dwell times to fill with shopping, therefore, have become a feature not a bug. Airlines frequently share in that revenue, either directly or through lower airport costs. Passengers alone can’t push for this – things won’t change until the airlines see it as in their interest.
More and smaller airports are needed. Streamlined security, that doesn’t wait for nationwide universal rollout, is needed. We need runways and taxiways and air traffic capacity to increase throughput without stacking delays. Most of all, we need to avoid complacency that accepts the status quo as given.
Gary – your position on this is well known since you have literally beat this horse to death! You adage of “if you don’t miss a flight you are arriving too late” is beyond stupid. Also to attribute hourly earnings to time in an airport is very misleading. If you are working you get your job down around that (or from the lounge) and if you are retired or on vacation time isn’t as big a deal for the vast majority of us.
I’m retired but even when I traveled a lot for business (over 8 million miles over 40 years) I always showed up at least 2 hours ahead. Even with elite status, pre check, etc there are glitches sometimes. Also, I frankly enjoy the time before a flight. I go to a lounge or simply grab a drink from a bar and connect on wifi. It really isn’t that big a deal except to you and a small percentage of obsessive/compulsive people.
How about not publishing anything more on this topic (along with so many other quirks you have beat to death) – just stick to ACTUAL airline and card/points news similar to how Lucky works (and even TPG). You are a shadow of your former self and it is so sad to see.
Nice analysis! Staggering number.
A lot of people go to the airport on their free time which is worth much more than their hourly wage so the number could be a lot higher.
Seriously, how many people actually adhere to these recommendations? Once you’ve flown a few times and become familiar with the routine, you decide for yourself how soon you should arrive. You’ll recalibrate after your first international flight, but it’s all a process of learning and adapting.
I like to get to the airport 2-3 ahead of my flight. I go to the lounge and work, eat, and do many of the things I would have been doing at home or at the office. It takes away so much of the stress of travel. But everyone’s different.
We all have to consider the distance from our house or office to the airport, normal travel time, maximum potential travel time to due to traffic, and flight options if we miss our scheduled flight. My trip to SeaTac airport takes at least 2 hours, relies on a ferry crossing and a choice of 2 delay-prone highways. I’d rather err on the side of caution and spent me extra time in an airport lounge than be sweating in my car wondering if I’ll make my flight.
Amazing, they want us there early, for their convenience. Than, when through security, there are not enough seats, ans everyone standing, blocking the halls to the gates.
Fully agree. There are no incentives for the Airlines to change processes. There is no competition. That is because of massive regulation by governments. And the airlines are pushing for it to stifle competitive services.
Yep, I like getting to the airport early (at least 2 hours before departure)
– I love going to the lounge
– I can work from the airport the same way I can from home/office
– I like to get there early to remove any stress of missing flight
– I purchase things at the airport, this supporting the airport system, employees, etc
– I simply enjoy the energy of airports
Now, getting to the gate is a different answer. I like to get there when I am boarding or towards the end of boarding.
I have long referred to this as “airport math” – the TOTAL time it takes to get from your comfy bed onto the flight (at departure time). By the time you figure “airport math” into the equation, break even time between driving and flying comes in at around 5-6 hours.
And, mind you, because I have preCheck and Clear (and don’t check a bag on solo journeys), I try to arrive 90 minutes before my flight which is nearly always enough. Except in Atlanta – which is an overrated airport serving America’s most overrated city.
If flying involved less airport foreplay, more people would consider it a viable option for regional trips and not just Florida/Cancun.
First and foremost get rid of this joke called the TSA and all the security theater that goes with it. Second, for the exception of flight and visa/passport issues force people to use self service. Why do people need to see a human being to tag a bag and get a boarding pass. Yes too many airports have become shopping malls (really how do some of these stores survive?) which means long treks to a gate but that’s already a sunk cost. You can’t undo airports designed to be shopping courts.
At O’Hare, many of the international carriers close their check-in counter one hour before departure – and some airlines close their counter 75 minutes before departure. Get to one of these counters 59 minutes before departure and you won’t be flying that day. Careful international travelers do indeed arrive 3 hours ahead.
Gary, I agree completely with your point. Primarily for this reason, when I am traveling (especially within Texas) on a route that can be driven in 5 hours or less, I will either just drive myself point to point or take the Vonlane lux bus, on which I can actually work or relax en route, rather than waste half a day trying to make a stressful, cramped flight that is only 45 minutes or so in the air work. And its not just the airport and airline delays that have to be accounted for. There’s wasted transit time to the departure airport and from the arrival airport to final destination, parking, dealing with shuttles, rent cars or ride service hassles and delays. Add in baggage handling delays or lost bags, if you have to check something. To me, flying just does not make sense for shorter haul trips if there is a more relaxed and logical alternative available (not that driving I45 or I35 is relaxing …). An airport concourse is the last place I want to hang out in cooling my jets.
It’s good to see this problem being recognized. For the airline where I work, we are frequently asked by some particular airport or department to tell customers to arrive earlier, 2 or 3 hours, as you say. We’ve pushed back hard, but it’s hard to argue and win against the operational side when they have some immediate problem and some VP wants to show they can impact something. So the ask keeps getting published, which essentially extends effective travel time, and robs your time from other things.
Just like just-in-time manufacturing made a tremendous difference in cost of manufacturing, tremendous savings of time could be had in airports if they implemented something similar to it. There are forces against it, however. The biggest one is retail that depends on people having leisure time to spend on items at the airport. Per my observation, a relatively few people do very much airport shopping for overpriced items that they may not have space to carry. Maybe there could be shopping lounges that don’t crowd the main walkways. Charge an entrance fee that covers the same amount in goods.
Agreed. The death of frequent, short-haul air transport is heartbreaking. It has many factors, including teleconferencing vs. in-person client visits, but the time that is wasted on the airport experience definitely contributes. 2- or 3- hour drives become competitive with a 30-minute (takeoff-to-landing) flight. For years I had old paper timetables for Southwest. Dozens of flights a day between important business centers! No longer.
Nice assessment of some of the problems though it’s a little unfair to enumerate a bunch of problems without any solutions. Otherwise it’s just bitching.
it’s exactly 200 miles from my back door in Dallas to State Capitol parking in Austin. Unless I-35 is more backed-up than usual it takes 3 hours. Love Field parking A is always filled, I’m often at the far end of B, a quarter-mile hike, open-air so you enjoy the temperatures outside. SW gets huffy if I show up just an hour before take-off, preferably you’ll be at the Gate 30 minutes prior, wondering if it’s time for you to stand up and get in your proper place in-line to Board. Flight is 35-40 minutes. Current Austin airport, no way you’ll get a taxi and be at the Capitol is less than 30-45 minutes. If you’re taking a taxi FROM Love, you walk a quarter-mile, hauling your luggage (the moving-sidewalk never is), when you get to the far-end of B somebody will call down, a taxi may finally show up. My solution: I mostly resigned from any needs to go to Austin.
The arrival time recommended incorporates getting through security, shuttles from rental car centers, and your local traffic. To arrive at an airport 20 minutes before boarding door closes assumes there will never be a glitch in any of those factors. Seriously?? Good luck with that!
Like others, I head to the lounge and relax before my flight, so much less stressful that way.
@CTP It also accounts for queuing for bag check, boarding pass and non-precheck security. If you’re not doing those things you can adjust the time accordingly .
Where to start…?
@Gary — Broadly, I agree with @RetiredGambler on this — especially on the math.
But far more than that, If I lived in Austin, getting to AUS is a very different experience than if I lived in Dallas and had to get to DFW. Living in the San Gabriel Valley, for example, it’s a piece of cake to get to BUR and fly up to (e.g.) SFO, but if I’m flying to HNL nonstop, I’ll have to drive to LAX. Not only do I have to get there early enough to check a bag, but I *also* have to account for the vagaries of LA traffic!
I live in Berkeley, CA. Most of my flights are out of SFO. I typically take early morning flights — especially if flying back east — for two reasons: the plane is already at the airport, and the traffic is much lighter before (or during the earliest hours of) rush hour. A couple of weeks ago, I had a mid-morning flight and — without thinking (yes, my fault) — I gave myself the usual travel time…except it was now the height if rush hour and getting to the airport took over one hour longer than usual. Missed the flight…wasn’t happy about it.
@Retired Gambler “Gary – your position on this is well known since you have literally beat this horse to death!” Your remark contributed nothing to the discourse. But my pointing that out will not keep you from making similar statements here again, or elsewhere, alas.
If one is unfamiliar with the airport or is traveling when there will be many scheduled flights and passengers, perhaps 2 or 3 hours , depending on the destination — domestic or international — may be good. At some airports and for some destinations, a prospective passenger will have much time to sit and wait, and wait, and wait. Or else to cruise the shops and restaurants. The choice is the passenger’s.
For domestic travel, I like to arrive 60-75 minutes before departure time. If I have a big bag, I check it curbside, because they can get a bag on a plane in no time. If I have a small bag, and enough time to talk to the gate agents, I gate check it, because they don’t have an oppertunity to lose it and I don’t need anything in there until I get to my destination. I empty my pockets into my personal item (backpack) while I’m in the security line, and walk through with nothing but my boarding pass and ID on my person. Sure, I’ve missed two or three flights in my life, but that is 0.003% of the total flights I have taken in my life.
This topic seems to be a biweekly staple on the blog. Perhaps time has come to make it a bi-yearly one, along with the bare feet topic lol.
Under 4 hours drive we take the intercity bus.. Being in MX we only show up 90 mins early for flights. 10 minutes for the bus. Price is almost the same. The American flight experience is goofy, and with all the gun nuts and nut nuts there, we avoid that shi hole altogether.
who arrives 3 hours early? I will arrive 2 hours early for international, 1 hour for domestic. I’ve never missed a flight due to my arrival time. The assumptions in this article are comical. the real time waste is the reduction of flights to the point that layovers are 2-6 or more hours on most flights.
Last time I flew out of my hometown airport (Missoula), it took 7 minutes to get from the curb to my gate.
I usually plan to arrive 1 hour before departure, and often am late for that…
There are advantages and drawbacks to small airports, but consistent quick times from curb to gate are nice.
I’m an Atlanta native, subject to Diarrhea Delta’s strangle-hold on Atlanta Hartsfield-LaToya Jackson International and Domestic Abuse Airport.
I never ever arrive 3 hours before a flight. I try to cut it as close to time without having to wait more than 10-20 minutes. It’s possible. In fact, I have never missed a flight though I’ve been very close.
If you Uber to the airport so you don’t have to park, you have Clear+TSA PreCheck to use the fastest lines, and you have only carry-ons, you breeze past even Atlanta’s ignorant, illiterate, and inept airport servants.
I avoid having to spend one extra minute in this sewer. It’s bad enough to sit on a Diarrhea Delta plane and inhale the filthy FA’s queefs. Imagine if you had to endure sitting in a SkyClub surrounded by screaming kids and the usual Diarrhea Delta pigs milling around the communal trough.
Those of us who can’t just “buy an upgrade” in order to get a normal sized human seat, most of us can’t afford the fees to “relax in the lounge” much less even buy a drink to relax.
I usually show up 1 hour before flights and I still spend way more time on the ground than in the air on most trips.
Ex-Delta and United ramp and flight operations supervisor here.
I think this article is a bit superficial, although the monetary value figure for the time wasted waiting for a flight seems interesting.
This is a logistical problem to solve:
– Ideally, one would have additional TSA agents to spare which you can bring in when the line gets long – but how are you going to get employees who will work part time, and only when it is busy? Or do you want to pay for additional agents who don’t do anything for a significant amount of time?
– If 75% of the passengers show up one hour prior to departure, can you get all the checked bags to the tarmac on time and can you then load them all, by hand, to the airplane on time?
– Most international flights enforce PPBM (positive bag match – if the passenger isn’t on the plane, their bags shouldn’t be on the plane either). If you put all of the bags on the plane, and then you have some stragglers, you have to go back in and look for the bags in the belly of the airplane to take them off. If you load the bag only after the passenger is on board, you potentially have to load hundreds of bags 30 minutes prior to departure. How do you solve this problem if passengers check in 90-60 minutes before departure?
Smaller airports have an advantage for sure – I lived in London, Lima and Miami, and I wouldn’t dream showing up at the airport less than 2.5 hours prior to departure. I now live in Central Oregon, and I can show up at the airport an hour before departure, check in bags, and make it to the gate in 10 minutes. Also the TSA people here are nice!
This is a pretty silly post. Everyone knows airlines and airport just say that to cover their *sses. Most people don’t actually show up that early. I fly weekly and usually get to the airport 15 mins before boarding. Haven’t missed a flight in 20 years.
Have you SEEN the airport construction going on at SEA? Thank Dog I am an elite status with Alaska and rarely check a bag, but I still try to arrive at that nightmarish terminal 90+ minutes before my flight because now, thanks to credit card company promos, too many casual ( 1-2x / year) travelers have turned TSA Precheck into just another security line with their lack of understanding of how to empty a water bottle, take off a giant puffy coat, take their passport out BEFORE they get to the agent, etc etc etc. I go through the ticket check and then I quickly scan the baggage check lanes to see which has the fewest children/ large families or seniors wearing winter gear in August..
Talk about preparedness, when I worked in customer service at LAX, I was always impressed when the occasional tourist (usually German) would stop in a day or two before return travel date, to do a practice run to locate the particular terminal, car rental return area, etc.
“How about not publishing anything more on this topic” So, 30 or so people thought this interesting enough to post on. But, despite their interest Gary just shouldn’t post on this in a place where clicks are part of his livelihood?
I either arrive 30 minutes before boarding or a few hours and spend time in a lounge to work on my computer to combat productivity loss. With TSA Pre, the longest I’ve waited to get through has been 25 minutes but most of the time, especially here at PHX, I’m usually through in under 5. If I go to an airport with known congestion/delays or travelling internationally, I plan to arrive a least a few hours in advance or more due to the unpredictable queues. Again, will find a lounge or a nice spot to relax and catch up on some reading if I’m not working.
This is why Europeans (and others who can) take trains. City-center to city-center MUCH shorter and far less hassle than flying.
@JohnnyD Imagine if high-speed rail was an option for shorter journeys… if politicians weren’t bought by the oil industry this would already be a thing.
Exactly the kind of sketchy financial analysis I have come to expect from consultants.
Airports exist to buy voters with DEI TSA jobs, and earn profits for LMVH and AmEx. Thoughts of timely and safely getting would-be passengers from home or office into a flying metal tube.are secondary. Get thee on your own time into your own car and drive from your climate-controlled garage to your destination, and along the way pay cash for your gas station coffee. (or, if waxing nostalgic, take a last-minute booking on Amtrak.)
Gary,
Your math is so ridiculous. Firstly, there is an old saying that goes, “if you were to take all of the economists in the world and lay them end to end…that would be a good thing”. I always give a big eyeroll to these types of pronouncements.
Secondly a lot of people at the airport are on vacation. No work lost. In fact a net positive to the economy as the money flows through.
Finally as many of the commentators have said life for them does not come to a standstill when you are in the airport. In fact for most people whther you are in the office, working from home, or working from the airport very little changes. I’m going to assume the company you work for has email and available internet. This isnt 1975.
Me me me, it’s all about me. No it isn’t.
It’s about the people who don’t fly on a regular basis, who check luggage, who don’t know anything about the TSA process. And there are more and more of them.
You need to get to the airport early because the clueless people are in front of you clogging every step of the way at the airport.
Run the cost of showing up late and causing flight delays or missed flight.
Airlines recommend that just to cover their own ass. However, as others have said, it’s not purely wasted time. Time in the lounge with free food and drinks and a nice view of the tarmac is enjoyable. Plus you could do work at the airport as well. Then there’s the matter of what would people otherwise be doing with that time if they left later? At home watching TV or browsing online, probably. So I think your cost estimate is orders of magnitude off. The only truly wasted time is going through security.
I wish we had thought of high speed trains so as to be less dependent on air travel. Too bad we have no money since we always are sending it overseas to other countries for war.
Really it all depends on the airport. Flying out of DCA? You can easily get away with showing up an hour before your flight if you have pre-check. Flying out of JFK? You’re gonna want 2-3 hours for that.
The wholesale movement of car rental spaces from convenient terminal spots to annexes requiring a bus, plus the post-2001 security theatre and general incentives for airport operators and airlines NOT to streamline things has seen me essentially end ALL one-day out of town up-and-back flying. I used to do these one-day trips to a variety of Western States destinations, but haven’t even done it once since about 2010.
I like how most of Asia does it. You cannot check bags or check in until 2 hours before your flight so there is no reason to show up 3 hours before.