When You Should Arrive At The Airport – 3 Reasons To Be Early
When you arrive at the airport are you an early bird or a last-minute person? I’m going to let you know the reasons why you should be arriving early at the airport.
I’m sure some of you have talked to people who have traveled a lot and like to cut down the time they need to be at the airport. Not everyone does like to arrive at the airport early because they think it’s boring or a waste of time. I, on the other hand, prefer arriving at the airport early. You’ll have less stress and be able to board your plane calmly.
Why you should arrive at the airport early
Variables
The thing is, when you arrive at the airport, you don’t know what all the variables are. If you get there without a significant amount of time to get to your gate, you could be in trouble. You don’t know until you arrive if there’s a huge line at the check-in desk. The first thing you want to check when you arrive is how long the line is to check-in. Now there are ways around this, obviously, you can check-in online, you can print out your own boarding pass and you can use the self-serve kiosks but you want to understand what your options are and what you’re comfortable with when you get to the airport.
Long lines
The next thing is you won’t know how big the security and immigration lines are. You may hit these at a really busy time. I’ve done this before and I start to sweat in immigration lines. They are going so slow and you can just see the time ticking away and it gets very stressful because you don’t know if you’re going to make it to your gate on time or if you’re going to miss the plane. It can be very stressful and I do not like arriving at my gate or on the plane stressed.
Now the last thing you’re not going to know really is the gate that you’re going to be going out of. You can’t really determine how long it’s going to take you from the check in counter to the gate. This could take no time at all or not. Your gate could be just past security or you could be on the other side in a different area of the airport. To give you an idea of the airport, you can look up the layout of the airport you are going to, but when you don’t know your gate number, you don’t exactly know how long it’s gonna take you. I was at the airport in Kuala Lumpur and first of all there’s two airports here that have the same airport code which is super confusing and left me in tears but I also didn’t realize how far away my gate was. I arrived there in plenty of time, like at least three hours prior. I knew I was there early so I did a little shopping first. The line to check in wasn’t long at all either. I then checked in, went through immigration and I just took my time. I went for some food, just minding my own business knowing that I had time. It wasn’t until I checked a board to where my gate was did I realize how far away I was. I was the furthest gate in the whole airport and this airport was huge! I could hear, as I was speed walking, the calls for my flight. I didn’t realize I had to go through security twice because of how big the airport was. I was stressed! I’ve never been late to a gate before. I was so stressed. I was now running my butt off trying to get to the gate. I arrived when they were announcing the last calls and I was the last person in line, thank god there was still a line. It was so stressful, I was sweaty and frazzled getting on that plane.
This is not the greatest way to start your holiday to be frazzled and stressed for the sake of saving what could be an hour, maybe an hour and a half prior to you leaving on your trip. So I highly recommend that you get to your airport early and especially if you don’t know the airport, get there early. There’s no point stressing yourself out, bring a book, bring your laptop, tablet, etc. There are so many things to keep you busy nowadays that the time will just go by. I hope this gives you some good reasons to arrive at the airport early. Distance to gate