Before you leave home
Check in online when the window opens, usually twenty-four hours before departure. It confirms your seat and puts a boarding pass on your phone, and on airlines that assign seats or boarding positions in check-in order it gets you a better one. Screenshot the pass, since airport wifi fails at bad moments. For a domestic flight you need a REAL ID-compliant license, marked with a star, or a passport. The cheapest basic fares often exclude seat selection, changes and sometimes a full-size carry-on, and the gate is an expensive place to find that out.
The clocks that matter
The two-hour and three-hour advice exists because of cutoffs, not because the walk is long. Airlines stop accepting checked bags at a fixed time, commonly forty-five minutes before a domestic departure and sixty before an international one, and a bag that misses the cutoff does not fly. Boarding usually begins thirty to fifty minutes ahead. The aircraft door closes ten to fifteen minutes before the time printed on your pass, which is when the plane pushes back and not when you are due at the gate. Confirm your own airline's cutoffs, which vary.
At the airport
- Drop checked bags first, and keep the claim receipt until the bag is in your hand.
- Clear security, then find your gate before you find food.
- Check the departure board again once you sit down, since gates change and the board usually knows before your phone does.
- Board with your group. If the overhead bins fill, the crew will check your carry-on at the gate without charge, so pull out medication, batteries and valuables first.
Connections and trusted traveler programs
Treat one hour as the minimum domestic connection, and allow two or more when you arrive in the United States from abroad, where you clear immigration, collect your bags and recheck them. When both legs are on one ticket, the airline has to rebook you if the first runs late. On separate tickets you are on your own.
PreCheck buys five years of a shorter, lighter screening lane. Global Entry adds a fast lane through US immigration and includes PreCheck, which makes it the better buy for anyone with a passport. Both require an application, a fee and a short interview, and the Department of Homeland Security's trusted traveler site lists current fees.
Tip Save your known traveler number in your airline profile, not just in one booking. PreCheck works only when the number is attached to the reservation and the indicator prints on your boarding pass.
