I wonder how busy the airport is in general on Jan. 3. In particular, the airport in the bay area, SJC. I look up this web site. It seems it is quite busy in the early morning. Any one has experience with this? Thanks! http://www.whatsbusy.com/airport/SJC/20150103T050000
My kiddo used to fly back to college…to San Jose…and usually this weekend right after New Years. She says the airport was hopping. Lots of college kids returning to college. Lots of people heading home after New Years.
My son flew home yesterday, January 1. He said it wasn’t busy at all.
SJC is a nice, compact airport with only a limited number of airlines. I cannot imagine it being as crazy as SEA or LAX. That said, your son has to plan on being there 1.5 hours before his departure time. I would think today would be busier than tomorrow because all commuters who come to SV for the week to work fly back home for the weekend on Fridays.
My husband is a business traveller. He says that with the holiday yesterday, you won’t be seeing too many business travelers flying tomorrow. This just isn’t a busy week for business travelers.
Mcat…what is your concern? Just get to the airport early.
Thanks.
My concern is we do not want to get up too early unnecessarily (i.e., maximize our sleep time.)
We were flying from LAX to SJC on the Christmas day. Terminal 1 (where SW airline is at) at LAX, especially its ticketing area, was like a zoo. We needed to wait in line out of the building! We were “burned” just recently, so we would not want to have the same experience again.
It is strange that, at SJC airport, terminal B has only two airlines (SW and Alaska), but terminal A has well too many airlines - major ones like AA, Delta, United, JetBlue (and many others) are all at terminal A. I imagine there will be a larger crowd at Terminal A at SJC. (DS will fly out from Terminal A - my wife just has no “faith” in any connecting airport which is outside of Texas where she is familiar with, during the winter season. I could never convince her O’Haire/Chicago is good in the winter. She rejects all airports in NYC or NJ too because those airports are too busy. She is more paranoid about air travel than I am.)
Plan to get to the airport 2 hours before your flight if you are really worried about lines.
And if you want to maximize morning sleep in time, easy solution for the future. Make a later reservations.
ETA…LAX, in my experience, is always a zoo. SJC is not.
Well…my wife was paranoid about the landing time as well (because of the land travel after landing) - it should not be later than the dinner time. Once we take the 3 hours time zone difference between coasts into consideration, the choice is limited: either the early flight or the direct flight. When the large and “busy” destination airport like JFK should not be considered, the latter option is out. So, getting up is the only option, according to her “logic”. The female rules in this family regarding the travel arrangement. My job is only to see if I could get 10 more minutes of sleep time, according to her “master plan.”
Where is the main character, the traveler, doing? Since his mother will not allow him to “bend her rule” (and my rule as well) in this area, he goes out jogging and likely goes to the gym after that - and it is likely he has an important call to make this evening. Everyone has his/her “job”. LOL.
Well…it’s not worth 10 minutes of extra sleep to have all,this worry. Just get up,earlier!
I would get up earlier, as I hate worrying about whether TSA will have awful lines and make it impossible for me to reach my destination in a timely manner by stalling me in the labyrinth of lines. That said, there are others who like to see how close they can cut things. 10 minutes of sleep is not worth all this extra agonizing and all the time and effort you have now put into researching whether to sleep 10 more minutes!
You are probably going to miss your son after your long visit. I can see why you’d want every last minute! But, yes, airports will likely be busy this weekend.
My nephew and his GF are flying tomorrow, as are lots of their friends and classmates as many schools resume on Monday, 1/5. Plan accordingly.
All this stress for 10 minutes of shuteye? Get up early and have a cup of coffee or tea with your son. And look up the TSA wait times on the airports website.
Thanks again.
Getting up earlier may be the way to go.
At LAX a few days ago, it was much more time consuming to get through the ticketing line than the TSA security line. I do not know why. I thought it would be the TSA security line that would take longer but it was not the case.
Unfortunately there is a luggage to check in.
BTW, something new to us is that sometimes when you are lucky, the ticket you get is marked as “PRE-CHECK”. If you has the pre-check ticket, you do not need to take off the shoes and you do not need to go through the X-ray booth.
I do not know who will get a “pre-check” ticket (i.e., boarding pass) and what criteria they use to issue the pre-check ticket. It seems it is pretty random but we “guessed” the senior travelers may more likely be issued a pre-check one.
I once read from somewhere that frequent travelers may pay some money to some government agency in order to be evaluated to see if they are qualified for pre-check. If they are qualified, they will not need to be X-rayed ever again. But I could be wrong here.
BTW, my wife just told me that DS helped washing dishes (without using the dish washer because of the small size of our family) many times during this break. He just did it again a moment ago after he had gone to the gym. She is impressed and pleased.
He’s a grown man, not a little kid! While teenagers will often balk at helping with household chores, it is not really remarkable when fully-grown adults help out.
Generally, a person can check in online 24 hours prior to the flight. If his boarding pass says “pre-check,” he will be allowed to go through the pre-check line. If the ticket counters are very busy at the airport, many airports also allow curbside check-in for luggage, where you pay any additional luggage fee (plus a tip), if that is shorter and time is getting tight.
Yes, you apply with US Customs and Border Protection for Global Entry or Pre-Check. It requires an online application, an interview, fingerprinting, photograph, and payment of $100. If you are approved it lasts for 5 years and you are more likely to get pre-check for your flights and can go through the short global entry line when re-entering the US from an international flight. H & I did this because we prefer to go through the metal detector over the full-body scanner. S flies often, so United paid for him to get a Global Entry card as well.
I actually think he may “score some points” with his GF because he is willing to help and share the work in this area. I heard his current GF dislikes a man who think man’s role and woman’s role should be different, i.e., hates “a woman should know her place.”
I guess we have taught him well in this area.
This reminds me that, toward the end of high school, he and his mom had a chance encounter with his then-GF and her mother in the mall. Her mother was surprised that he would accompany his mother to do the shopping and asked him: Do you often go shopping with your mother? (Unfortunately, that “puppy love” relationship did not last and was ended as a Turkey Drop.)
What work? If you’re talking about washing his dishes, good for him for being a decent human being.
Also, how did we get from airports to dishes?
And any woman of our generation who thinks a “woman should know her place” should invest in some good therapy.
“Also, how did we get from airports to dishes?”
I guess in the same manner as we got from gucci bags to cultural differences and from wearing PJs while skyping to… MD/grad school stuff.
And from TSA lines to turkey drop?
I guess I am the master of starting from one topic and then branch to several other topics. LOL. (But some of them are direct responses to the questions raised by other CCers, e.g., was asked whether DS is in a PhD program.)
romani, He was washing the dishes for the whole family, not for his own dishes.
Back to the thread: Which line may be longer? The ticket counter line or TSA security line during this time of the year?