Maybe I'm just lucky with travel...
Scoble sums up his travel advice with this:
Anyway, the new rule we recommend? 1:30 for any domestic flight and three hours for any international flight. If you can add more, do. There’s nothing more stressful than seeing a super long security line or, worse, being caught in traffic on the way to the airport knowing you are about to miss the only flight of the day.
Maybe I'm just lucky - I never allow that much time at the airport, unless the airport in question is Heathrow (it's often miserable to get through). When I fly from BWI, I usually don't leave the house until an hour before the flight, leaving 40 minutes or so at the airport.
As to what he says about checking bags - the best advice I can give is this: make it fit in two bags so that you can completely avoid baggage check. Nothing adds time to your trip like checking and retrieving bags.
Comments
The joys of air travel
[Yann Monclair] May 13, 2007 16:19:02.901
I don't think you can come up with a general rule for air travel. I fly easyjet to go down to London for work, and Easyjet has a policy of closing check-in 40 minutes before scheduled take-off. If you get there 39 minutes before take-off, you won't check in.
All this leads to me considering the train as a 2nd option for traveling down to London. It does take 5hours, but the station is 2 minutes walk from work, and it's a few underground stations from my hotel. In the end, I spend 5 hours on the train and maybe 30 minutes figuring my way to the hotel from there. It seems long, but I'd have to leave the office at the same time, to get at the hotel at the same time, with a 1-hour flight...
I know that for lines like Paris-Marseille in France, it is now faster by train (with our glorious TGV :) than by plane... But this brings us back to the cost issue: Time or Money ?
In many airports that'd doom you to hell
[Robert Scoble] May 14, 2007 1:49:38.658
In most big city US airports getting there 40 minutes before flight time would doom you to being late at least 20% of the time (100% if you are at an airport like Atlanta which is huge and which has understaffed security lines -- I waited 45 minutes in the security line alone).
I break my rules all the time, but do get caught once in a while. It's better to get there early and don't push it.
If you live in a small city you can push the times more.
Oh, and if you're checking baggage you BETTER get to the counter 45 minutes before flight time. If not they'll refuse your baggage on many flights.