alt Hacker NewsReally? Obviously it varies by country, but there’s no customs/immigration when leaving the US, and security usually takes <5 minutes with PreCheck. Sometimes immigration takes a while on the other side, but it’s quick at airports with biometric gate systems. You still hear people talk about airport buffer time in units of hours, but I think that’s increasingly out of date.
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So how long before the actual flight departure will you be at the airport?
If I catch a train that is 10 minutes before the train departs on a metropolitan train station in Europe.
With planes in my experience arriving two hours before the actual departure is not uncommon at bigger airports, since there are more insecurities involved like how crowded security checks are, where your gate is, etc.
Yes, ymmv (a lot). But alas buffer time is getting higher, not lower.
Yes, TSA is a big part of the problem. It's less "how long it took" and more "how long can it take". I've personally experienced those days where "TSA decided to go slow" and a couple hours disappears. The 5 minute days just make that worse.
Yes, the airport matters. If you're at some small regional it's no big deal. JFK or Atlanta etc is another thing entirely.
Yes, domestic or international matters. Yes, flying business class makes it faster. Yes signing up for "special status" makes things faster.
But airports are typically some drive away from city center (both ends, in traffic). Security and immigration both take time (often significant time.) Door to door time is easily 6 hours more than flight time.