I live in a small town on an island with 8k people in it that has its own international airport. I arrive an hour before if I have checked bags, drop bags off, go home, pick up the family, drop them off at the airport, drop the car off next door at my work, walk back to the airport, walk through security and board the plane.
fun fact, the four hour figure comes from average wait times during a rush at LAX and then, for some reason, got applied to every airport at all times.
Shout out to fucking Air Canada for keeping me standing in line for ages and then locking out all check-ins 2 hours before flight time without doing reschedules or refunds. Fuck you very much guys. If you’re travelling Air Canada I would definitely recommend getting there 4+ hours before.
Why would they do that? I’m so confused
I prefer to get to the airport plenty early. I always have a book with me so I can just hang out and read without stressing about time.
They actually only starts check in 4 hours prior to the flight. Don’t ask me how I know, I don’t have a life.
That must differ depending on airline/airport. I’ve never been able to check in sooner than 2 hours before any flight I’ve ever taken
What the hell are you talking about? They say 2 hours, not 4.
As someone who had a dad with undiagnosed ADHD, I had the opposite problem (he refused mental health treatment because he was a Boomer). We were always late to everything. And because he was a Narcissist too it was always everyone else’s fault.
My dad almost had a heart attack when I told him my flight was in 2 hours. Check in ended up taking 30 minutes and then I just waited for my flight.
45-60 minutes before boarding. The only reason to get there earlier is if you fly at dumb hours like really early in the morning or really late at night.
This is why you buy lounges
The airport won’t take luggage less than 45 minutes before the flight so that’s when I check in.
Some won’t let you check-in less than 45 minutes before your flight (or 60 for international). Only time I’ve missed a flight was because of that
Completely dead airport, got there 45 minutes before my flight, ended up missing the 45 minute check-in window by a couple minutes
They changed me to the next flight for free, and I just ended up having to wait around for a couple hours
This is out of thousands of flights the only time I’ve missed one. I usually plan to get there 60 minutes before my flight
That’s fully insane. Just standing there like “yep, technically you can’t get on that plane”
45 minutes before boarding, no?
I’ve never flown in the US; I live in the EU and generally aim for 2 hours if I have checked baggage, 1.5 hours if not. That usually causes me to still have significant waiting time after the security check, but better safe than sorry.
TSA tells you 2 hours, not 4. This person’s father is unwell.
person: posts an obvious, extremely common dad joke
you: their dad is a genuine danger to society.
you cannot be fucking serious.
Airport and airline dependent. I’ve waited an hour and a half to check my car seat for a budget airline.
TSA are equal opportunity haters and don’t care if you got to the airport two hours ago and your flight is in 30 minutes. They tell you to get in their line 2 hours before your flight and by god sometimes they are gonna make you wait two hours.
Edit: oh yeah also waited an hour becuase my budget airline wouldn’t let me print boarding passes and said “see agent” but didn’t staff any agents. Turns out they want to make sure your one year old is actually a baby and you’re not just a cheapskate trying to hold a twelve year old in your lap.
Tell me you’re from Denver without telling me you’re from Denver
Shit like this is why I avoid flying wherever possible. Such a miserable experience. I yearn for the day they finally somehow build that train tunnel across the Atlantic.
This is also why travelling by train can often be overall faster than plane, despite the train being slower. The station is in the middle of the city, no security check, the platforms are closer to the street, etc.
unless you’re in the US riding Amtrak. it’s never not been delayed for me, frequently by several hours
I’m lucky if the Amtrak station in my relatively large city has a departure time during waking hours
yeah my last train was scheduled at 2am (only option out of my largeish city) and was delayed until 6am
If the two locations are close maybe, but most of the time I would say theyre not remotely as fast.
You can fly from New York to LA in 6 hours. On a train it would take like 3 days
Only because US train system is biased toward freight.
Not complaining, it is what it is.
That said, I don’t see any pragmatic way to build passenger high-speed rail across the US. Every state would want it to run for them - otherwise they won’t support it. Then every city, etc.
Edit: for straight shots (point-to-point) across vast distances I don’t see train ever matching planes (like NY to LA)
It would be most feasible to have like three high speed rails in the US. Up and down both coasts, and then east coast to west coast through the midwest, Denver, SLC etc.
That alone would be enough to replace a ton of car and plane trips, even if it didn’t provide service everywhere
We can’t even build a single HSR line anywhere in the US
We’re a long ways away from being able to even think about trans-continental HSR
We simply do not have the competence to do it
The US rail network is already kind of a disaster. A lot of major cities don’t even have passenger rail stations at all. There are entire STATES that don’t have a single amtrack station lol.
Just for clarity, this map doesn’t show all Amtrak stations. The cities pictured are just the big ones on the routes
Depends on what type of train it is. A passenger aeroplane travels around 800 km/hr, a ‘typical’ train about 150-200.
However, the highest average speed of a commercial train is reached by the Fuxing, which goes 320 km/hr, enabling to go from Beijing to Nanjing (1,020 km) in 3.2 hours. The Shanghai maglev used to go faster, about 430 km/hr. So a train can certainly be faster than a plane on mid-long distances if we take pre-flight time into account.
An experimental Maglev, the L0 Series, managed to go 600 km/hr. At that speed, you’re honestly directly competing with planes at long distances.
Meanwhile Amtrak trains: 74mph, unless you’re on the Acela, then top is 150mph.
Try closer to 30 average. Most rail isn’t rated for above 50 outside the Northeast Corridor, and you’re also pausing for hours at a time sometimes because freight rail gets priority treatment.
Okay yea “often” was bit of an exaggeration on my part
I suspect DekSomBoon is talking about sensible countries
If, in this context, “sensible” means “smaller than half of Texas” maybe…
100% I’ll just aim to be at the station 15-30min before boarding and even then I’m usually early
There is no way in the name of all that is good and holy in this fucking world I’m getting in a 3000 mile tunnel under the ocean.
Would it be any less safe than flying? Probably not. But for some reason I would rather fall out of the sky and die than be crushed and drown.
Honestly it probably would be way less safe because the network of pumps and fans and whatnot that would be needed to keep that tunnel both DRY and oxygenated would be insane. I’m also pretty sure the trains would need to be built like submarines to prevent the atmosphereic pressure from crushing them? Or maybe the tunnel? It honestly seems like an engineering nightmare.
If it were built at all, which it won’t be, a tunnel collapsing under the sea would be one of the most instantaneous deaths you could ask for. Like that billionaire tourist sub at the Titanic. Immediately crushed and gone.
Given that your dad had to pay for the plane tickets and probably won’t get any refund if you miss it, and flying is fucking expensive, I side with your dad on this.
Two hours is plenty. Never missed a flight and I’ve been on many dozens, unfortunately. If I want to eat, drink, or shop beforehand, pretty much anywhere is cheaper than an airport, so I’ll do it elsewhere.
Once in Seattle I showed up at the airport 3 hours early, didn’t realize there was a big game that had gone in the day before, and only baaaarely made it to my flight on time. Wasn’t even international.
It can definitely happen, especially in large cities. I suppose I’ve mostly combined luck with my laziness.
It’s also why I greatly prefer small airports, the smallest of which was literally a single room made of corrugated tin and little else. My flight left half an hour early.
Medium sized airports are the problem. Airports for big cities can handle tons of people. But you have an event in a mis-size city and it’s a disaster.
Yeah small airports are great. Where I’m at now the local airport is pretty small, flights only go to/from Stockholm. They’re rarely even full I could probably just show up and grab a ticket like a fancy bus half an hour before takeoff. Sometimes there is a little stall selling local honey that’s just honor system nobody operates it and there isn’t any camera or anything just a wooden table and a paper with payment info lol
Sounds like I need to spend time in Sweden. My wanderings have been primarily equatorial.
