I remember the times before September 11, 2001, when I could show up at the airport about 30 minutes before my flight, get through security (which was locally operated -- no TSA), get my boarding pass at the gate, and board. It was great!
People could also meet you at the gate when you arrived, instead of outside the security area. There would always be peoples' families and loved ones there waiting for them.
Geneva, CH, recommends that you arrive less than 2 hours before your flight departs.
If you are flying within Europe, without checking a bag, and have the QR code from your boarding pass, it always takes less than 30 minutes to get to the gate. Allowing an hour is more than safe.
It’s good to assume that it heavily depends on airport, and time. I’ve been many times in the past years when just security took me more than 30 minutes. There are airports where it’s always less than 10 minutes (especially if you know some tricks), and there are airports where it depends on time. One hour is a good rule of thumb in Europe nowadays if you don’t have checked baggage. It would have been a stretch a few times, but I would have never missed a flight if I had been there only 1 hour before departure.
Last summer was crazy for popular airports in Europe, with queues lasting for multiple hours just to get _to_ security.
It was said that it was due to staff shortages due to layoffs during the pandemic though.
The airport experience is why, even though I enjoy actually flying, I avoid doing it to the greatest degree I can. Everything that happens from the time I arrive at the airport to the time the airplane leaves the runway is awful.
TTP/Global Entry sort of fixes this. What really fixes it is flying private. Unfortunately, that's doesn't do much to help the carbon problem.
The real difference now is that flying is too affordable. It used to be, only the rich could fly.
What we need to do is make air travel much, much more expensive, out of the reach of most people except on special occasions, and we can go back to having (1) less unnecessary carbon emissions from people flying to Disneyland or whatever shitty resort they spend their vacations at, and (2) very short waits at the airport for people who need to get somewhere in a hurry and can afford it.
Wow that would be very heavy handed and really assumes that the rich traveling are some how more meaningful for whatever destinations they are going to - maybe flying to some shitty meeting in Sweden that could be done over video conference. By this logic inflation happening now will fix the problems in the world bringing all prices up and forcing most people to become vegans because meat becomes too expensive and will also be for the rich only. Then cars can be for the rich too and in the end we can let the poor sit with out technology at all leaving only the rich one percent having all the carbon emissions. Finally the environmental crises is solved.
> really assumes that the rich traveling are some how more meaningful
No, it assumes you care about reducing air travel more than equality of access to it
> forcing most people to become vegans because meat becomes too expensive
Sounds...effective? It isn't what is happening, but taxing the hell out of meat would be a great lever to pull if you want to drive consumption away from it.
Outside of cost the only possible lever is rationing. Good luck with that one.
wish that were true, but the variance of wait time, even with tsa precheck, etc defeats the purpose. needs to be reliably consistent (and short) for me to take advantage of a 30min show time.
Those problems solved but a lot of other problems created. This genie can't go back into the bottle that easily. People live in other countries or states now and want to see their families too.
I am old enough, but arriving 20min before a flight was never really a thing. You could in theory arrive that way, but you were running a risk. Any delay in security, a delay in the bus system, or just bad luck with an irrate customs person could always delay you a few minutes too long. And if you werent even checked in 20min before your flight you had a very good chance of being bumped off the flight for someone on standby. There was also zero chance of any checked bags making it onto your flight unless you were checking in at least an hour before travel.
The last time I flew through Dublin airport I got from my taxi to my gate in 16 minutes including checking in a bag. I had arrived 3 hours early nonetheless due to the "chaotic" queue times I had read about.
This is one reason why I prefer to take the train for work whenever possible, even it takes longer and isn't that much cheaper, the onboarding experience is awfully simple and relatively stress-free.
From the bay area, there is nowhere you might want to go that a train would make less stressful.
Want to go to LA? That's 1 hour in the air for around 100 bucks.
Or it's a 10 hour ordeal involving transfers between coach bus and train in more than one location. All for the low price of 60 dollars.
Want to go to New York? That's 6 hours by air or 80+ hours by rail. Where realistically you are going to book a roomette ($$$) and not just sit in coach for 3 days straight.
