[Dixonary] Off Topic: Flying

[Guerri Stevens]

Anybody travelled lately? I will make a couple of trips soon, one on
Wednesday. I called the airline, and the person with whom I spoke said I
should plan to be at the airport *3* hours ahead of my flight time. That
seems excessive to me. Luckily I didn't pick the 6:15 a.m. departure!

--
Guerri

[Daniel B. Widdis]

On 8/21/06, Guerri Stevens <guerri (AT) tapcis (DOT) com> wrote:
> Anybody travelled lately?

No, but I know people who have.

> plan to be at the airport *3* hours ahead of my flight time. That
> seems excessive to me.

It is excessive, but the airlines are just being conservative. People
I know are saying it's not taking more than 15-20 minutes longer than
it used to.

--
Dan Widdis

[Christopher Carson]

Guerri,

That (3 hours) sounds like a worse case scenario and would depend on which
airport you're using. The bigger the airport, the more the anticipated
delay. Given the additional screening that's going on now in the wake of
the UK arrests I think the airline is being overly cautious on the time
estimate. If you can, I would check the specific airports you're going to
use and see how the delays run. I usually try to observe the 2 hour before
flight rule at Newark and Denver and usually end up cooling my heels for an
hour or so but on a couple of occasions I've hit a particularly busy time
and it took 45 minutes to an hour to clear security. Time of day makes a
difference as well. First thing in the morning is usually much easier then
mid-day or later. That's also true of on-time departures. The earlier
flights tend to have fewer delays since there hasn't been time for weather
and traffic to build up to clog the system.

Chris

[Guerri Stevens]

Thanks to Chris and others who responded. My flight is at 9:30 a.m. and
I think is pretty full. Getting there 3 hours early means 6:30, which
means I leave the house at 5, probably get through check in in 20
minutes, and sit around! But maybe not. I will try to find out more
exact information on delays. I think that there is a web site that has
it, but when I looked yesterday, all I saw was "3 to 4 minutes" to check
in. But I think I need the time for the security screening, not checking in!

I will not put fluids or gels in my carry-on. I wonder how they are
checking for them - are they hand-searching bags again, as they did way
back when they started the whole thing, and before they had the scanners?

Guerri

Christopher Carson wrote:
> That (3 hours) sounds like a worse case scenario and would depend on which
> airport you're using. The bigger the airport, the more the anticipated
> delay.