In a continuation of my complaints from last Thursday: The parking shuttle took forever! And then there wasn’t enough space for everybody!
We’ll get to that.
What time should you get to the Austin airport? How early should you arrive for a flight out of Austin? How long does it take to get through the Austin airport?
It used to be, in the before times, that when flying out of Austin you could show up to the terminal 45 minutes before your flight if you weren’t checking a bag and an hour-ish before your flight if you were checking your bag. Parking yourself? Add ten or fifteen minutes for the shuttle process. Flying out during the early-morning slate? Add fifteen or twenty minutes because a lot of people would try to force it.
Now, it’s a mess. Getting to the stage where TSA Pre-Check is heavily advised.
The Austin airport has its strengths: There are a lot of local places from town there to charge you three times the reasonable rate for good food past security. TSA agents at the main terminal are kind and helpful (at the South Terminal they’re panicked and rude, but the South Terminal is its own airport servicing only Allegiant and Frontier right now and feels like it doesn’t actually exist, especially when you’re there, so the panic adds to the experience). The airport’s on the smaller side, so once you know your way around you can just walk in from economy parking, which is what I did on Thursday when the parking shuttle was taking forever. (If you’re flying out of the South Terminal, none of this applies. Just make sure you go to the South Terminal. Don’t go to the main terminal if you’re flying out of the South Terminal. It will be a bad thing.)
The Austin airport now has its weakness, though, and I don’t just mean that it doesn’t have as many direct flights as its Los Angeles-raised users are used to: It’s understaffed. And some of the passengers are still drunk so it needs more staff than, say, Salt Lake City.
Right now, I think you probably should actually get to the airport an hour and a half before your flight. Especially if you’re checking a bag, and especially if it’s an early morning, and especially if you’re planning on taking the parking shuttle, because who knows when that thing’ll get there and how much space it’ll have. (Really, just try walking sometime. It’s so much easier that the shuttle.) You might be ok pushing it, and it’s possible there are times when an hour and a half won’t be enough, but an hour and a half’s the general guidance these days for people who aren’t looking to sit around for an hour after security (not knocking those people, but those people don’t need to know how early to get to an airport—they are covered by their own love of airport bars and/or Sudoku).
The early-morning thing’s still the weirdest. We were at the airport for a 6:45 AM flight a couple weeks ago and thanks to one passenger with a confusing luggage situation and one passenger who was angry and inebriated, every Delta employee in Travis County was evidently tied up. The line stretched out into the concourse. People got restless, and restless people get snippy towards their angry, inebriated fellow traveler. Airport staff had to come set up new stanchions, which logically led to people getting in the Delta bag-check line thinking they were getting in the TSA line, which led to all sorts of other confusion. We had the conversation about when to just throw our liquids away and go get on the plane. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that.
I still don’t know exactly how early you have to get to the airport for an early-morning flight in Austin. I’m trying an hour and a half again tomorrow, but that’s without parking. Early mornings at that airport are just wacky. Nothing makes sense. A few months ago there was an incident where the rental car places weren’t open and everyone just ditched their cars in the garage and on the ramps and on the three-lane circular road that leads to and from departures and arrivals. It looked like there’d been a rapture.
I will say, again, that TSA in Austin is the best. Always kind, always helpful. I don’t understand why this is, but it’s the case. TSA in Austin has, weird as it sounds, smoothed out more than one bad situation for me and my loved ones. Also, after the Delta bag check gone awry, TSA had the dogs out speeding up their own line. They are good TSA agents, and I ask that you treat them with respect.
But, uh, yeah. Probably an hour and a half early. And if you live here, just use economy parking and walk. Allow yourself some extra time the first time you do it, but it shouldn’t be more than a ten-minute walk from the furthest lot if you hustle. Fly safe, pals. (I used to also say to use the Eastern-most security line, but that might no longer be a shortcut. The Central one was slow last week but also short.)
