Tips for travel plans to Sydney Airport

When taking a shuttle service to the airport a little bit of pre-planning and thought can help to ensure you arrive relaxed and with plenty of time to spare for check-in and catching your flight.

Start with your flight departure time and work backwards to determine the best pick-up time for your trip to the airport.

Common recommendations are to arrive at the airport 3 hours before your International flight, and 2 hours before for Domestic flights.

Things to consider:

• allow up to 45 min for travel time between Sydney city, Inner suburbs and the airport, especially during weekday morning peak hours (7am to 9:15am). This accounts for normal traffic during these times, also allowing for other possible passenger pick-ups along the way.

  
  

• The day and time you are planning to head to the airport. Monday mornings 5:30am to 6:30am are often the busiest time of the week, especially for entering Domestic Airport departure area. There are often long queues of vehicles entering departure area at this time. Thursday and Friday mornings are also quite busy times with people heading out of Sydney for the weekend.

  
  

• Having lots of luggage or extra / over-sized luggage may mean extra time required for check-in at the airport terminal.

More frequent travellers may often decide to time their trip to the airport to minimise any waiting time before their flights. While this may work well 9 out of 10 times, there may be the time where there is an unexpected traffic incident, sudden heavy weather / storms that may pass through which impact traffic in the city, or other unexpected incidents which can cause unavoidable delays.

In such cases a tightly timed trip with minimal waiting time at the airport suddenly turns into a trip with very little time before a flight, and a stressful trip to the airport for the traveller. To avoid such a scenario it's always best to leave some buffer time in your travel plans to the airport. Aim to arrive comfortably and relaxed!