SJC Arrival Time Question for Departure
 

If my flight departs at 6:30am on 12/22 out of SJC, what time should I plan to arrive at the airport?

Should I expect it to be busy due to the holidays, even with the extremely early flight?

I have TSA precheck, but the some of my party does not.

530am? I don't think very much happens before then.

If I were traveling alone I would even arrive at 6am. We'll plan to arrive at 5:30 then, thanks.

I've seen some madness in SJC before, especially around the holidays.

We'll move this to another thread for a more regional perspective.

~beckoa, co-moderator Information Desk

Is this for an international departure or domestic?

With the possible exception of TLV, I'd never consider showing up earlier than 90mins before a flight (and that goes for intl from big hubs). Small airports at crack-of-dawn take away 30 mins.

Forgot to mention, this is domestic. No checked bags.

And I'll relocated this thread to the San Francisco forum where SJC questions are commonly asked.

TWA884
California moderator

I see 12 flights scheduled to depart between 6 and 6:30 am. That's about 1200 passengers. Considering that some airlines often close the doors as much as 10 minutes before scheduled departure, arriving 30 minutes before scheduled departure even with TSA pre-check would be taking a substantial risk. One hour would be my minimum with a family without pre-check. Ask yourself what a few extra minutes of a relaxed departure is worth compared with a frantic dash or even worse, a missed flight, would mean. My slogan - I'd rather be in here wishing I was out there rather than out there wishing I was in here.

Today the PreCheck security lane at SJC was the one farthest back looking from the front of the line. This meant that you had to wait with the non-PreCheck people for a little bit after the ID/boarding pass check, which slowed things down a bit.

I don't know if it's normal for SJC but considering that's a possibility, arriving a bit earlier than usual is probably a good thing to do.

Was this Terminal B? IME at Terminal A PreCheck goes around the outside and doesn't commingle with non-PreCheck except when the actual PreCheck security late is closed and they're doing PreCheck Lite.

Yep. Normally you turn left after the ID check station there and don't commingle with the others but apparently not yesterday.

I experienced the shared line as well. This was due to the k9 on duty I believe.

Last time I flew through SJC, the precheck line wasn't even open at around 7:30am. When I got to the belt, the agent there questioned me on who sent me to the regular line.