Our flight leaves Lisbon at 6am on 8/26 (Lisbon - Munich - San Francisco. First leg on Lufthansa, second leg on United)...has anyone flown out of Lisbon recently at that time? How early should we plan to arrive at the airport?
We got stuck in a terrible line getting through customs on arrival due to the customs strike (4 hours just standing in one spot!), but I don't think the current strike affects outbound flights. Am I wrong? Any recent info/experiences would be great to hear.
Thank you!
Stephanie
UPDATE: We made it home!
We left our apartment in the historic district of Lisbon at 2:30am. We called an Uber which came to pick us up in 3 minutes. We also could have grabbed a cab at the Praca do Comercio (cabs always wait there) or we could have called Radio Taxi which runs 24 hours. Lots of easy ways to get to the airport so I don’t think it’s necessary to stay overnight at the airport for an early morning flight. It also means you don’t have to pack/unpack one more time for just a few hours at the airport hotel. Plus, there was zero traffic at that time of night, so the drive took 15 minutes from downtown Lisbon.
We arrived at the airport at 2:45am. Lufthansa started checking bags at 4:05am. By 3:20am people started to cluster around the four (closed) Lufthansa counters. This was not organized at all...no indication of where to stand. Unfortunately, even though we had been waiting at the counters since 3:20am, the area we chose to stand in ended up being the business class line (these are the left two counters) and we were told we had to go to the back of the EXTREMELY LARGE cluster of people. Total bummer!
At this point, Lufthansa started creating the queue (would have been nice if they had done this sooner). So we went to the back of the line and waited 1 hour and 15 minutes to check our bags, get our boarding pass, and have them review our covid test. By the time we were done with this, it was 5:20am. We breezed through security and made it to our gate with 10 - 15 minutes to spare. So there were no issues with the customs strike for us.
Our flight to Munich was about 45 minutes delayed taking off (not sure why). May have been because it was 100% full and it just took that long for them to board everyone. We arrived in Munich with about 10 minutes until our next flight started to board. Even though we had to walk pretty far for our connecting flight and go through two security checkpoints, we made it! In addition, Lufthansa had communicated with all connecting flights and we were told that flights were waiting for us...pretty much everyone on the plane was flying on to another destination.
So the answer to my question: What time should I arrive for a 6am flight on Lufthansa from Lisbon to Munich? I would arrive at 3:15am - 3:30am and immediately start waiting at the Lufthansa counter to check bags (the two for Economy are on the right side...If I remember correctly, they are counters #16 & #17). Once you are through security, you can grab an espresso and one last pastel de nata!