Arrive two hours early so we can waste them professionally.
In the United States, the usual official baseline is to reach the airport about two hours before departure. Your airline or airport may demand more time for international travel, checked bags, peak crowds or the simple administrative pleasure of watching you age under fluorescent lighting.
FlyAndCry recommends arriving while the terminal is still being built. This will not improve your journey. It merely gives the journey more time to happen to you.
The two-hour donation
Passengers call it a buffer. We call it surrendered inventory.
You provide two fresh hours. The airport converts them into seventeen minutes of queueing, eleven minutes of removing objects from your pockets and ninety-two minutes of sitting near a charging outlet occupied by one sleeping backpack.
Nothing has gone wrong yet. That is why the process feels suspicious.
Calculate your required level of regret
Start with the time printed on your ticket. Then work backwards through every organisation that would like a private opportunity to disappoint you.
- Check-in and bag-drop cutoffs: arrive before them, because arriving with a suitcase after the cutoff transforms checked baggage into a heavy emotional support object.
- Security: allow time for the security queue, where every belt, laptop and bottle participates in a small public trial.
- Parking and terminal transfer: airports enjoy placing the correct terminal one minor railway system away from your car.
- Documents: international travel may require additional checks, because borders prefer their paperwork frightened and slightly damp.
Add extra time for holidays, large airports, checked bags, children, mobility assistance or the possibility that you have ever experienced optimism.
If you arrive too early
The check-in desk may be closed. Security may be empty. Your gate may not exist yet.
This is excellent. You now belong to the terminal.
Choose a patch of carpet and establish residency. Learn the seasonal migration of cleaning machines. Form a meaningful relationship with a vending machine selling water at the price of emergency surgery. If you remain long enough, airport management may classify you as furniture and move you closer to a power outlet.
If you arrive exactly on time
Exactly on time is an expression used by people who have never met an airport.
Your train will stop between terminals. The bag-drop printer will develop personal boundaries. A family of six will discover liquids directly in front of you. The departure board will change your gate with the quiet confidence of a kidnapper changing vehicles.
Then comes the final call: a calm public announcement that your cardiovascular system is now part of ground operations.
If you arrive late
The airport becomes a gym with customs officers.
You will run while carrying a laptop, three jackets and the knowledge that your flight is boarding from the farthest architectural point permitted by physics. Escalators will move at funeral speed. Every sign will say the gate is seven minutes away, including the sign you pass seven minutes later.
If you miss the flight, we will explain that time management is your responsibility. Our decision to move the gate, close boarding early and hide the aircraft behind a bus transfer remains operational art.
The FlyAndCry arrival formula
For a domestic flight, begin with two hours. For an international flight, follow the larger allowance given by your airline and airport. Then add:
- 30 minutes if you checked a bag;
- 45 minutes if the airport has more than one terminal;
- one hour if you intend to buy coffee;
- the rest of your natural life if you purchased priority boarding.
Do not worry about arriving too early. We have chairs designed to make fifteen minutes feel legally significant.
At FlyAndCry
We ask passengers to arrive early because punctual suffering is easier to schedule.
Your flight will begin boarding the moment you finally order food. Your gate will change when the payment is approved. Your carefully protected buffer will then be consumed by a bus ride across the runway to an aircraft that was visible from your original seat.
You did everything correctly. This will be included in the investigation against you.