Question about when to arrive at airport

I’m familiar with the traffic patterns around the part of Santa Clara valley that concern you. The good news is that right now most of the tech companies are on hybrid work. So more workers are physically in the office midweek (Tuesday to Thursday). So Monday traffic is lighter. I’m not up and about that early but I would think that if you hit the 85N to 280N junction at 6am you’ll be fine. The section of 85 north of that junction tends to back up later in the morning.

I only have one tip for United at SFO. If the security line at the domestic terminal is really really long you can walk over to the International terminal. Clear security there and walk back to the domestic gates airside. Of course this assumes the international terminal security checkpoint is open. There’s probably a way to check that online.

Hi Karen,
I think your proposed schedule allows adequate time even if there’s more traffic by August than now. (Aside from rush hour, there’s early Monday traffic coming back from beach weekends, but that should be manageable.) You didn’t say how you are coming up from Monterey to get to 85 —- 101 or 1/17 — I think it’s a wash.

I now like to allow 3 hours before domestic flight boarding time from Santa Cruz to SFO, estimating getting onto 85 in about 30 minutes, onto 280 10-15 minutes later, onto 380 about 30 minutes later, and at parking about 20 minutes later. Depending on where you park, it may be another 20 minutes until you’re at United checkin/security. Then I pad that a bit. (And sometimes I take the coastal highway up to 280/380 or 92/280/380 - a much easier and lovelier drive but requiring an extra 20-30 minutes.)

Actually, now I usually use a driver who allows 2 hours door-to-door, but I sometimes feel a bit anxious about getting through security.

As you realize anything can go wrong with this, but generally it should allow comfortable time for checkin, restroom, short stop at the bookstore and the coffee shop. As far as I know there aren’t “special” problems at SFO these days but be sure to check when you’re closer to your trip. I’m still traumatized by the chaos and delays a couple years ago when they were working on the runways.

Thanks for the feedback. We were thinking about the Monterey air bus, but it’s expensive and means getting a neighbor to drop us off at 4am.

I’m dealing with the fourth flight change since November and every option gets a bit worse. If we needed a hotel, I might press United, but I actually like the 7 hour flight over Atlantic instead of a 12 hour from west coast. And now we arrive Edinburgh in the am instead of evening.

Still wondering if we will have to check in at airport or if we’ll be able to print boarding passes at home.

If you have the UA app there is no need to print your boarding passes. You can just checkin on the app and get your boarding passes on the app. The boarding passes will automatically update if there are gate changes etc.

note - if this is your first time using the app it will ask you to scan your passport before letting you checkin for the flights

A couple of thoughts. Do you have one of the fastrack flex transponders? It might be useful in the unlikely event that there’s an issue on 280 and you have to go via 101 on Mountain View. The transponder is the only way you can use the express lanes on 101.

That’s a long day of travel. 6 hours by the time your flight takes off, 5 hours to the east coast. A layover of 2 hours perhaps? Followed by 7 hours on the flight to Edinburgh. So around 20 hours? If you have the time and budget please consider driving up the night before. Stay at one of the airport hotels. Some of them have packages that include parking. So might not be that much more than parking alone. Less stressful preflight morning.

Yes, have fastrak transponder so good to know about on 101.

Looking at both options, driving up that morning or spending previous night in hotel. But this info helps. Anyway you look at it, it’s a long day of travel!