Driving to LAX from Candy Cane Inn

[redsox721]

Our flight home is on a Saturday at 12:40 pm. What time should we plan to leave the hotel? We will be returning a rental car to Thrifty first. Not sure of the drive and traffic. Thanks

 

[Kittyskyfish]

DH flies through LAX several times per month, occasionally on Saturday. In his experience, the airport can be very busy on Saturday mornings. We've done LAX before from Anaheim and hit traffic on a Saturday morning. It took us about an hour and 15 minutes to get to the airport.

A conservative plan would give extra time to account for freeway traffic, car rental shuttle waits and long lines at the airport. We allow no less than 1.5 hour between ticket counter and arrival at the gate, 30 minutes between car rental drop off and getting to the ticket counter and 1.5 hours for traffic. This gives us extra time to catch a bite at the airport before flight, too.

If you go by this plan:

Departure time: 12:40pm
Time needed to be at gate: 12:10pm (plane loads at this time)
Time needed to be at ticket counter: 10:30am
Time needed to be at car rental dropoff: 10:00am
Time needed to depart hotel: 8:30am

 

[maltbyclan6]

We left on Wed morning this past week. Our flight left LAX at 11:30. We left the hotel at about 8:30am, and we got to the rental car return (Hertz) at 9:20. Then we waited for the shuttle to take us to the airport, which took about another 10 minutes or so. We had already checked-in online, so we made it through the ticket line, dropped of bags, and was through security in about 15 minutes.

 

[MichaelColey]

On our latest trip, we left for the airport about 4:15am for our 7:05am Tuesday flight, took a horrible detour suggested by our GPS, found the right route on my iPhone, got some overpriced gas for the rental car, just missed one rental car shuttle, waited for the next shuttle, got our bags checked in just before the cutoff, made it through security, and got to the gate a few minutes before they started boarding. That was cutting it much closer than I like. I would certainly concur with the "4 hour before the flight" suggestion. Maybe 3.5 hours. 3 hours is just too close if anything goes wrong.

 

[mechurchlady]

DH flies through LAX several times per month, occasionally on Saturday. In his experience, the airport can be very busy on Saturday mornings. We've done LAX before from Anaheim and hit traffic on a Saturday morning. It took us about an hour and 15 minutes to get to the airport.

A conservative plan would give extra time to account for freeway traffic, car rental shuttle waits and long lines at the airport. We allow no less than 1.5 hour between ticket counter and arrival at the gate, 30 minutes between car rental drop off and getting to the ticket counter and 1.5 hours for traffic. This gives us extra time to catch a bite at the airport before flight, too.

If you go by this plan:

Departure time: 12:40pm
Time needed to be at gate: 12:10pm (plane loads at this time)
Time needed to be at ticket counter: 10:30am
Time needed to be at car rental dropoff: 10:00am
Time needed to depart hotel: 8:30am

I agree with this estimate.

Most of my flights have been with shuttle vans but still a nightmare if you get stuck on the freeway. Been here all my life and probably seen on the news enough to make me leery and have spend almost 2 hours getting to skid row once which takes about 20 minutes normally. Came home from DLR recently on a 15 minute trip that ended up double that because of an accident.

 

[bumbershoot]

I took would be in the car, getting out of the hotel driveway, at 8:30, definitely.

We almost missed our flight from LAX in December, and I have NO interest in doing that again. We are people who consider being at the airport 1.5 hours before the flight to be borderline late, and getting to the gate 5 minutes before it should have left (turns out they hadn't even boarded) was a nightmare for us.

And we did that b/c we underestimated everything. Time to get out of DCA, time to get our stuff from Bell Services. Time to get the car, time to pack the car. Missing the exit, going to the next sketchy exit, getting gas (there was also a problem with that), turning around. Getting to the LAX Avis place. Time for the shuttle. Time to get from the shuttle drop-off to where you check in bags on Alaska. Time to get the bags checked was shorter than expected, which was bad. Stopped at security b/c of hubby's shorts zipper and my 1.5 inch barrette OF ALL THINGS. Time to get everything all back together. The time from security to the gate was fine, though.

Everything was underestimated (it was my fault b/c I'm the "leader" of our trips and the family just follows me around, and I made some BAD choices that last day) and it was very scary.

So 8:30, in the car, pulling out of the driveway. I'm sure that by doing that you'll be early and will curse our names, but being too early is so so so much better than running up to the gate like we did!

 

[lisah0711]

I think the estimates are spot on but I would be leaving at 7:30 a.m. or 7:45 a.m. in case there is an accident, car trouble, etc., maybe it is just us but we don't like to cut our airplane trip too close as it is expensive if you miss it. (Missed a flight due to weather delays in Chicago and it cost me $1300 to get three of us home from Milwaukee on another airline -- yes, United would have eventually taken us back home -- 5 days later!)

 

[redsox721]

A little late with my reply, sorry.

Thanks everyone for your advice . I had no idea we would have to leave 4 hours early. Not used to that when we are flying out of Logan.