Dealing With Airport Stress

Your flights booked, and now it's airport time. Airport's can be stressful places nowadays, and these tips are designed for stress reduction...

Leave home early
Airport stress starts the moment you leave home. Don't sit in traffic watching minutes tick away. Aim to arrive at the airport two hours early (usually required for International flights). Then if there's traffic delays, you've still got plenty of time.

The check-in line
Now you've arrived, next step's check-in. Usually, there's multiple lines you can choose from. Which looks quickest ? Maybe the longest line is quickest ? Here's a couple tips. If you see lots of families and children in a line, avoid it. By the time they've found all their tickets, and sorted their luggage jumble, they've taken twice the time of a couple or single person. Look for a short check-in line that's not easy to see. Look at each end of the check-in aisles, and maybe there's a valid check-in hidden by a pillar, that few people see. It can cut off a half hour that you could spend otherwise.

How long to walk from lounge to gate ?
You can walk from 2 to 20 minutes after a call to your gate. Ask at check-in. It's an important question. When that screen flashes 'Go to Gate', it's much less stressful if you know how long you'll take to walk there. All your good work of stress-reduction goes down the tubes if you walk 5 minutes and then realize your gate is way the other side of the airport terminal. Sometimes you even have to go through more security, or another passport check, and find a line waiting there. This happens most often to international arrivals. A long passport control line stands between you and your gate, and departure is scheduled just 15 minutes later. If you find yourself far enough back in a security line, go to the front and explain the situation. No one should object to your passing through first. But try to avoid this unnecessary stress by checking in advance.

Invest in the Executive Lounge
If you travel often you might get free entry to an airport executive lounge. If not, you can often pay a small amount to use it. The ideal low-stress airport experience begins in the executive lounge. Away from all the airport hustle & bustle, relax with free drinks and nibbles. Read a newspaper or magazine and you're soon in just the right, relaxed frame of mind for your journey.

Are you nervous?
Don't feel embarrassed to be nervous. A lot of people are nervous of flying, but you know it's much safer than your car journey to the airport. If you can't use an executive lounge, then there's a couple other options to reduce your stress. Try shopping ! Retail therapy can actually help take your mind off your nervousness and stress. There is no need to buy anything. Just wander around looking.
 
Follow the above tips and you'll have a relaxed and stress free airport experience, all ready to enjoy your vacation or business trip.