My mom instilled in me at a young age that it’s important to get to the airport about 2 hours in advance of scheduled departure (for international flights). And I’m glad for that because a few years ago my girlfriend and I landed in Milan after visiting relatives in Belgium, from where we were traveling to Venice, Cinque Terre, and Rome before returning to Milan for a flight back to the US. I got us a cab to the airport where we arrived. To my surprise, they couldn’t find us in the system and it turns out there are 2 airports in Milan. Oops! Luckily a very nice cab driver took us across town very swiftly and got us to the correct airport with time to spare. Why? Because I got to the damn airport (the wrong one) at least 2 hours early.
The only time I’ve ever missed a flight (a domestic business flight) was due to lounging in the airport after arriving early morning, having a relaxed breakfast in another terminal, casually making my way over to the correct terminal, sitting down for a poo, and hearing “final boarding for flight ###” and by the time I got there it was too late. They said they tried paging me, but since I was in a different terminal I had no idea. In my early morning half-awake state I was confusing the departure time with boarding time, I guess.
I was in Bristol airport yesterday, and from the size of the queues, I would say if you were flying Tui and had check-in baggage, you wouldn’t have made your flight within two hours. Both the flight out and the return flight were delayed by an hour or so due to various staff shortages. Cap it off with the “All passports” queue at Schiphol because of Brexit, and all in all it was the most stressful flight experience I’ve had for quite some time.
From what I’ve heard they’re asking people not to get there super early. And they call people forward so you won’t miss a flight. However, that still makes me very anxious
