In my experience, there’s nothing more miserable than being early to an airport at the crack of dawn and then being forced to stay awake at the terminal, counting the minutes until you can blessedly fall asleep on the plane.
If I were you, I’d try and shave off every single minute possible between you hitting the alarm in the morning and getting into your seat on the plan. Try not to check a bag, check in the night before and get the boarding pass on your phone, have everything you need planned out the night before so you can be out the door 15 minutes after you wake up.
You’re flying business class so you should get into a special line for security. If you live close to the airport, I’d plan on waking at 4:30 and getting to the airport at 5. If you live further away and traffic might be variable, then plan to get there at 4:45.
Some airports do close. And not just tiny ones in tiny places. I’ve arrived for an early morning flight and the airport doors were close. I don’t recall the city but check it. But for PHX, I don’t think it closes. But check.
PHX is often a connection for flights out of SJC. I’ve flown to and through there often.
It is good to check if an airport or its ticket counters close. It’s a bummer showing up early AM and the front doors are locked. And at a decent sized city’s airport, too.
Once in Korea I planned to get to the airport 2 hours early. ICN is super efficient, and never takes more than 20 minutes to get from the subway terminal to the Gate. There is often a long line to check bags, but it goes quickly and the security line is always fast.
I misremembered how long the subway takes to get to the airport from Seoul. It was much longer than I remembered! I got to the airport about an hour and fifteen minutes prior to departure. I still wasn’t too concerned until I went to check my luggage. The fucking airline I was flying doesn’t have their own ticket counter. They just borrow another airlines counter to handle the passengers since they don’t fly out of there often enough, I guess. They close their ticket counter an hour prior to the flight. By the time I located their office and learned of all this, there was still 50 minutes until take off. Still enough time to check my bags and get through security, but they claimed there was nothing they could do from the office. They could only do it from the ticket counter, and the counter is closed so I’m shit out of luck. All they could do was sell me another ticket for the next day.
Fuck my life. I had to buy a one-way ticket for first thing in the morning. It was $1900 to fly from there to Italy. That was almost twice what my round-trip tickets cost me! Plus I had to pay for the hotel, and a very depressing ride back into Seoul.
The next morning I arrived 3 hours early (to be sure). I was so pissed still, that I started my timer the minute I exited the subway at the airport. It took me 18 minutes to get from there to my gate. Assholes.
Anyway. Yea, that was international, and kind of a unique situation. But the point is you never want risk it. Just get there early and find something to do at the airport. I have lounge access through my credit card, and I always take advantage of that.
I checked. Phoenix Sky Harbor is open 24 hours a day. Security checkpoints open 90 minutes before the first flight. All terminals have at least one 24 hour restaurant, so there’s no problem getting food at any hour.
I know you’ve checked the situation there, but in the airport I used to work in, 6 am was actually the busiest time of the day for flights (being the earliest they were permitted to fly out).
People would regularly waltz in around 5, expecting the place to be empty, and to be able to go straight through, then see the huge queues…
The earliest ticket counters there opened at 2:30, or 3 am, as did all the shops, except the few that were 24 hr. And that was a little rinky dink local airport.
I would give myself at least 90 minutes. I fly about 100k miles a year and I like to include enough buffer so that if something goes wrong, I can still make my flight. I would much rather be sitting in the business lounge near my gate reading the paper than be stressed and hoping I make it through security in time to get to my gate. That’s me though, I like to remove the stressors I can control when I travel.
If it’s a 6AM departure, that means your boarding time is probably 5:30 or even 5:20AM, with doors closing probably 5:45 or 5:50AM. They might hold doors later in the day at major airports if there are connections that have already landed and started deplaning passengers, but the crew’s not going to wait for a morning flight just because some passengers couldn’t be bothered to wake up on time. Taking all of that into consideration, I’d get there no later than 4:30, and as others have suggested, 4AM is probably better.
I’ll also mention that I flew last month and noticed that the TSA lines are noticeably slower than they were when I flew in December. In fact they were so slow at one airport they got backed up and had to hurry people along, so they didn’t scan as long as they normally have in the past when it was time to go past the checkpoint. I would factor in a good half hour just to get through TSA if you’re at an airport in any major city.
Good call on the TSA lines, I’ve noticed it too. Add to the fact that you are going to an unfamiliar airport in a foreign country and this thread is making me nervous. I feel like I should be heading to the Phoenix airport. I like to get to the airport early though, I’ve only missed one flight in 20 years of logging heavy duty mileage.
Last time I flew, it was just me and one small carry-on. Gave myself plenty of time and practically flew (:D) through check-in. Except: I must have had my “TSA, Please Roust Me” T-shirt on, because they took me out of line and into a “room” and did the feel-me-up search; and the bag. I had a suspicious-looking bag of malted milk balls in the bottom of the carry-on and the X-ray tech was eyeing it funny and my searcher-guard joked (loudly) that she was going to make off with said MMBs. Now, everybody was well above-board with the search (I suspect random training mission), more than courteous, apologetic, even. Very professional; almost friendly. They DID suspect something fishy in the carry-on, but they didn’t find anything. Much later, I wondered if it might have been the garage door opener in one of the pouches–maybe the battery? All in all, not the horror story I would have expected. But I did have plenty of time; if I hadn’t, it would’ve been a different story.
Some flights ‘close’ an hour before boarding. No less than 90 mins before. I used to take a 6am flight fairly often, and my house was 40 mins from the airport. I am NOT a morning person, but I also hate missing flights
When I got to that airport that one time it was an early flight, maybe a 0600 flight, I got there @0430 for my domestic flight and the airport was closed and it sucked. It was a cold winter morning and the big glass doors were locked although the big glass windows showed bright lights shining on a warm ghost town inside. I had no choice but to wait outside in the cold witch’s tit weather, looking longingly inside for any sign of life.
It seemed like forever before a guard finally showed up and unlocked the door.
Like I said it was a decent sized city, maybe something like Milwaukee MKE or Kansas City MCI but don’t quote me on that.
90 minutes is what I do for domestic flights, so I don’t feel nervous and time pressured. I might push it to two hours if it’s a particularly high travel day, but 90 has served me fine. I’ve never missed a flight by being late (I did miss one once showing up at the wrong airport, though.) For international flight, I go two and a half to three hours early, but I kind of like to chill out at the airport before a big trip. I’m not quite as air traveled as somebody who flies regularly for work, but we’re looking at about sixty to seventy domestic flights, and thirty to forty international.
What kind of holiday travel is that? I’d call and have the flight rescheduled. No way I’m taking a 6 AM flight unless it was an urgent matter. Travel is stressful enough, I wouldn’t allow anything to add to it. Getting up at 4 AM to catch a flight I think is ludicrous unless you are one of those early larks with a sleeping disorder.
If it was me, and I had flown across the world to witness a fairly unique event like the total eclipse, I wouldn’t put missing it at risk for 30 minutes extra sleep.
