How much time to allow at Sydney airport for flight to US at 7:30 pm on a Thursday

Our flight home leaves from Sydney to the US on American Airlines at 10am. We’re staying at The Grace Hotel downtown so am I correct that we should leave before 7am to allow for rush hour traffic?

YES! And not later. Better at ghe airport half an hour early and relax over a cup of coffee, than 10 minutes late. Check in opens 3 hours before departure for a reason.

All those people who suggest that they cut it fine arriving at the airport, "because you only need 90 minutes" must be travelling on a full fare flexible ticket and irrelevant schedule. " if I miss that flight, oh well. I just take the next." Not with most tickets...

YES! And not later. Better at ghe airport half an hour early and relax over a cup of coffee, than 10 minutes late. Check in opens 3 hours before departure for a reason.

 

All those people who suggest that they cut it fine arriving at the airport, "because you only need 90 minutes" must be travelling on a full fare flexible ticket and irrelevant schedule. " if I miss that flight, oh well. I just take the next." Not with most tickets...

 

As one of those people to be fair what did I say about Sydney traffic?

 

You don’t need to be at the check in counter 4 hours before - as you point out it doesn’t even open up til -3 hours!

 

Absolutely understand and allow for Sydney traffic - but don’t over compensate on the airport aspects

 

And no I don’t travel on fully flexible fares and even if I did international flight schedules don’t really lend themselves to catching the “next flight”

All those people who suggest that they cut it fine arriving at the airport, "because you only need 90 minutes" must be travelling on a full fare flexible ticket and irrelevant schedule. " if I miss that flight, oh well. I just take the next." Not with most tickets...

Arriving at the airport 90 minutes before the flight isn't even cutting it fine! That's very common for me, and I am usually travelling on the cheapest non-refundable tickets I can get. And no, I don't have the luxury of saying "I'll just take the next", because I'm very often on the last flight of the day on routes which only have one or two flights a day anyway.

 

It seems that what I have in common with Bodogbodog may be that we do this frequently, so we know not to make a big deal of it, while also not doing anything that's not sensible.

Since there seem to be a number of people on this thread who truly know Sydney traffic, could you advise me regarding getting from the White Bay cruise terminal to the airport for an 11:35 am flight to NZ? Our ship gets in at 8 am (hopefully earlier) and we had flights scheduled for after 1 pm but Quantas cancelled them. So now we are in a bit of a time crunch. Should we take a taxi to the airport? Take a taxi to Circular Quay and then a train to the airport? What makes sense—time wise? Try to reschedule to a late afternoon flight?

Qantas (no U) :D

 

Only one option - take a taxi or Uber from White Bay to the airport

 

You don’t want to be backtracking to Circular Quay. If you wanted to catch the train you would go to Central station and catch it from there but with the time pressure in your case I would recommend taking a taxi directly. You will be fine to get there in that time window to arrive by say 9.30am to allow checkin 2 hours prior to your flight

 

I don’t think you need to reschedule unless you want to make some time to look around Sydney

Thank you for your response. In the meantime, I was sent a link to the port authority’s calendar and it shows that we will dock at the OPT. Phew. I checked it out this morning and found that we are the only ship using that terminal that day. So we are definitely relieved.

 

Lots of people talk about the terrible traffic in Sydney, especially during rush hour and we didn’t want to be in the middle of that. We live an hour away from San Francisco and get an airport hotel when we have a morning flight.

With two of you and your luggage I’d definitely get a taxi or Uber (we don’t have Lyft) rather than schlepping your bags on the train

Yes—taxi or Uber. Do they both take credit cards or should we get extra AUS in one of our previous ports?

Definitely take credit cards - I saw a bad news post recently about a taxi driver not turning the meter on and then saying only cash - don’t let them even try that - they need to run the meter and also accept credit cards.

 

Remember in Australia there is absolutely no need to tip - people get a reasonable wage so tipping is not a factor here

Thanks for the reminder about no tipping. We are so used to doing it here in the USA.

 

And thanks for the reminder about the meters. We were so frazzled in Warsaw last summer after a delayed flight that we didn’t notice the taxi meter wasn’t on. When we got to the hotel, I was surprised at the fare requested because I had read that we should pay x for the ride. Since we hadn’t confirmed the cost before we got in the taxi, we figured we got “taken” due to our carelessness.

The only problem I can see is if you happen to be flying on the first weekend of the school holidays or a long weekend as the traffic in and out of the international terminal can be very bad on those days. I am still a fan of the train. If you are docking at the OPT and don't manage to get off the boat before 7am (when traffic through the city would be really light and taxi definitely the best option) I would bear the trek to the station with my luggage and take the train. The reason is that once you are actually on the train the stress is over whereas in a taxi the stress has just begun if traffic starts to get bad. In reality i don't think you will have a problem arriving on time with either option but for me the train is the more relaxing option.

We’re going to the airport on Wednesday, May 9 to fly to NZ. Our ship is scheduled to dock at 7 am according to the port authority calendar (and 8 am according to the ship’s schedule) so to be on the safe side, I would say around 8 am.

 

We’ve been to the OPT years ago. We got out, turned left and went to pick up the HOHO bus. Is that the direction we go to pick up the train? Can we buy the tickets on the train with a credit card or does it have to be before?

These days when you exit the OPT you just keep walking straight ahead to get to the station, then left, then right into the station entrance. There are elevators and escalators to take you up to the platform level once you are through the turnstiles.

We’re going to the airport on Wednesday, May 9 to fly to NZ. Our ship is scheduled to dock at 7 am according to the port authority calendar (and 8 am according to the ship’s schedule) so to be on the safe side, I would say around 8 am.

 

We’ve been to the OPT years ago. We got out, turned left and went to pick up the HOHO bus. Is that the direction we go to pick up the train? Can we buy the tickets on the train with a credit card or does it have to be before?

 

Direction is right.

The trains are elevated at circular quay.

You buy tickets BEFORE you get on, either at a machine or window. Both take credit cards

Thanks to all for your advice. I feel more confident that we will make our flight. I almost changed our tickets to the afternoon flight but, due to everyone’s help, I’m glad we didn’t spend the money to take a later flight.

 

We looked at the schedules for all the airlines flying Sydney to Auckland and couldn’t find any direct flights from noon onward, except for the 4 pm Qantas flight. A rather strange situation.

We looked at the schedules for all the airlines flying Sydney to Auckland and couldn’t find any direct flights from noon onward, except for the 4 pm Qantas flight. A rather strange situation.

It reflects the peaks and troughs of profitable demand during the day (think about what business travellers want to do, and when), and the way that the combination of flight duration and time zones works.

 

You can see this more clearly if you look at the schedules for Sydney to Wellington and Sydney to Christchurch - these are either in the morning (before 10 am) or early evening (6 pm onwards).

 

In some ways, the oddity is having midday and mid-afternoon flights from Sydney to Auckland at all, but that is explained by the thickness of that route, which allows additional flights to cover the slacker times of the day so as to increase the attraction of the product, plus (in LAN's case) the scheduling needs of a Santiago-Auckland-Sydney-Auckland-Santiago rotation.

Thanks. That makes a lot of sense. I just thought that the air traffic between two major cities would be more frequent. Then, after reading your explanation, I thought about the flight patterns around where I live and I guess the same question could be asked of us. I guess we are just used to our flight patterns so we don’t even think about “why?”