TSA and advance arrival at airport

For a while I’d record when I left home, and when I got to the gate, to prove that I didn’t need as much time as I’d been allocating.

The wild card here is traffic, it can be between 25 minutes and 2 hours. And I almost missed dropping someone off for a flight years ago so I’m still a bit scarred.

google maps bro.

traffic concerns is a thing of the past

Pre covid, i aimed for an hour plus time to park for domestic, or 2 for international. The only times I’ve been the person running were:

  1. massive traffic gave me much less than 1 hour
  2. connecting flight was late, racing across airport
  3. in Hawaii, made the mistake of trying to fill the rental car at Costco. Holy shit was that a long line, and hard to get out of it, once we were in it. And there, i (with TSA pre) would have been fine. We only ran into trouble due to the combination of Costco and my husband not having TSA status.

In the interest of minimizing stress and reducing opportunity for things to go wrong, I’ve actually started accepting the “pre-pay the fuel” option when renting cars for personal travel, unless I’m familiar with and comfortable with the fueling options nearby…and those options are viable if I’m hurting on time.

It’s not the thrifty option, but I’m willing to pay a little to combat stress.

i can usually get gas reasonably close to the airport. Even if 10 miles away, they won’t ding you

If i am truly late or can’t find a convenient place, i’ll pay the big penalty

but with GPS, it shouldn’t be hard

You clearly don’t live where I do. Google maps tells me what traffic is like this instant, not how it will evolve over the course of the drive.

It also fails to understand how one lane of a road can be completely stuck feeding into an on ramp, while the other lane is moving with through traffic. It averages the 2 and gets it very wrong. Same problem with left turn jams.

Waze seems better with both those things, but still can’t correct for how traffic will develop as one drives.

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This. As long as the needle is on full or very close to it they won’t check it, so you have a fair amount of flexibility on when to fill up.

and if close enough, fill up the night before

I think this might have been the TSA recommendation for a while pre-COVID, and was almost always adequate.

No train option to the airport?

it depends on number of routes, sometimes there aren’t better options.

But, start GPSing at least an hour before you want to leave to see if you need to go earlier

That removes the variability and fixes the travel time at 2 hours…

That’s too bad. Fortunately our public transit link is convenient. Bus plus train costs $3, takes 40 minutes and eliminates parking costs/transfers.

It’s not hard, but I’m content to pay a few extra bucks and have one less thing to mess with.

It’s an interesting psychological phenomenon of being conditioned to avoid paying $1-2 more for a tank of gas but be fine regularly throwing down $5 for a cup of coffee.

this makes no sense

  1. isnt $1 - 2 more. if you use a 1/4 tank it is 4x more. and it is more for a minor convenience

  2. a better analogy is you pay $5 for coffee if you bring your own cup, but $20 if you use their disposable cup

I really, really don’t ever want to miss a flight though… (doesn’t matter much, I’ve only flown once in the last 5 years - and that time, the flight was delayed for about 6 hours, so…).

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I’m talking gas in general, not necessarily rental car pre-purchase. I’ve known of people who will go out of their way to “save” 5 cents per gallon.

ok, I agree, but not really on topic

I go to costco for gas that’s 1 dollar cheaper than the gas station next to me.

Not sure if it’s worth it. I get gas like once every two months.