I try to make it 1 hour before, and that's only because of bag drop off deadlines. I know plenty of light travellers that show up 15-30 minutes before departure, basically at gate close time.
(disclaimer: in the EU)
Also we don't have good mass transportation. If you're in EU, Asia you can take a train and be pretty certain you'll get there on time (barring a big event). In the US...a crash on the interstate can wreck your day. A sporting event can cause huge traffic jams on the main arterial road. So I to leave my house early enough for the 2/3 hour "before the flight" to pad for that.
My recent international flights were out of Mexico, London, Hong Kong and security lines are short. I was expecting some kind of secondary check point (Having said that I recall flying out of Toronto and it was like Disney world line)
1. no transit terminals so everyone has to do full immigration
2. no international one-stop-security, so every international arrival with a connection (except those pre-cleared) have to redo it
UK airports are also guilty of #2
Three hours is totally unnecessary but the asymmetric risk of missing a flight vs posting up with a beer and a gameboy tilts things toward an earlier arrival.
It's refreshing to travel from a regional airport though.
I'd also hesitate to refer to a pat down and manual search, as annoying as they may be, as "harassment."
Are you Sikh, by chance? If so, what do you do with that little knife you carry when you fly? I’ve never thought about that when I had the opportunity to actually find out.
I’d wondered how that was handled, as a religious object. It’s obviously more important to the holder than my pocketknife is to me, and I have zero concern about a Sikh person carrying one anywhere. They’re not going to bust that out. And yet, it is a knife.
Probably the closest I’ve been that that was flying home from our wedding with the cake knife in my carryon. The TSA agent’s eyes widened when I hold him the shadow on the X-ray was a cake knife, but then I took it out and showed him how it was a ceremonial thing and wouldn’t break skin. Then the agent laughed and sent us along our way. A Kirpan isn’t so delicate, though.
At some point I took a job that required significant travel, and I learned to cut things much closer. Usually not less than 45 mins. But if I’m flying internationally I’ll still show up at least 2 hours early.
Nothing compares of course to traffic on 90/355/190.
Once, I showed up two hours before a flight a few days after Christmas. I had a lapchild, so we needed to check in with a person and not use the kiosks.
We stood in line for 90 minutes, then stood in the security line for 30 minutes and missed our flight. They couldn't rebook my family for a week. We rented a minivan and drove 1800 miles, without our luggage.
The punctuality of the trains is incredibly poor. And the chances are above zero to end up at a train station in the middle of bmfck nowhere.
Not my first time spending a night at Frankfurt Airport. But not within the comfy sterile zone after check-in... more like sitting in front of the small overpriced 24/7 supermarket.
So unless its an intra-EU flight, it's still 3 hours affair just to depart.
The most infuriating is flying to EU with my non-EU biometric passport. It has all my data and photo encoded in the chip, my remaining visa days count is in the system - let me just scan it at the automatic gates and speed up control! But no, fuck me I guess, go to the slowass line to the customs, where a sleepy officer will do the same thing as I would have done myself and simply swipe the passport through the machine and proceed with that info. And maybe try to bullshit me with some inane questions. "Oh, you don't remember an arbitrary number of letters and digits written in your ticket, and which one can read any time if needed? That's suspicious!".