Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
BTW I've never been able to make any sense of the standard advice for USA airports to arrive two hours early for a domestic flight and three hours for international. The domestic and international check in and security lines are exactly the same, and at most the check in (if not OLCI) and bag drop deadlines are thirty minutes earlier for international. It doesn't take more than a few minutes to check the passport unless there's some major problem (and if you've forgotten the passport or it's expired, an hour certainly isn't enough time to fix that). The requirement (which varies slightly across carriers) to be at the gate thirty minutes in advance for international and fifteen for domestic is taken care of by the difference in check in and bag drop deadlines. So any reasonable calculation would suggest arriving thirty-five to forty minutes earlier for international.
Probably because most casual travelers are morons and planning for 3 hours out does allow most people to still make their flight if they run into some kind of major issue like a blocked road or forgotten item. The cynic in me also things it's to boost airport concession revenue,
I once arrived at JFK without my passport at 2 hours out. Thankfully since I only live 20 minutes away I was able to rectify and make my flight.
Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
Someone on TV news is saying that even with both CLEAR and PreCheck, an additional two hours should be allowed for TSA security at MSP. I don't understand how/why CLEAR doesn't seem to be working unless hundreds of people have decided to sign up for CLEAR this morning as a way to pay them $179 or whatever to avoid missing a flight, but I wouldn't think that so many people would even be aware of CLEAR.
I was at LGA once where there was a 30 minute wait for PreCheck. In those 30 minutes I saw at least 20 people sign up for CLEAR on the spot just so they could make their flight.