Want this on your phone? Ready Time sends an alert when it’s time to start each step.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Be at CVG two hours before a domestic departure and three before an international one. That still doesn’t tell you what time to leave the house, so put in your departure time and adjust the drive, parking and bags.
Want this on your phone? Ready Time sends an alert when it’s time to start each step.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
The 20-minute drive is a typical run from Cincinnati without traffic. In the app, set Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International as the destination and Apple Maps fills in the time from where you’re leaving.
Still check traffic for the hour you’ll go (real drive to CVG). Change the row and every step before it moves.
A maps app covers the drive to CVG. Bag drop, security, and the walk to your gate usually take longer, and they are the steps people misjudge.
Here is the same plan drawn to scale. The first block is travel; the next two are the airport. A checked bag grows one, a far gate grows the other.
Front door to boarding: 2hr 20min
Two hours domestic, three international
Ahead of your departure time
That is a solid default here. Trim it only on routes and hours you already know well.
CVG asks for two hours and says to allow at least thirty minutes of that for screening. It is one terminal with one checkpoint, open from 3:30 AM to 9:20 PM, and two concourses behind it; the checkpoint closing time is the fact that bites, because an evening departure has no second line to fall back on. The airport is across the river in Hebron, Kentucky, so the drive from Cincinnati crosses a bridge and the traffic that goes with it.
A single checkpoint for the whole airport, which keeps the choice simple and puts every departure in the same line at the morning bank. PreCheck and CLEAR both run in it. Concourse A is close behind the checkpoint; Concourse B is the longer walk, and the walk figure here assumes it. Touchless ID lanes exist for PreCheck members on participating airlines.
The plan allows 25 minutes for a standard lane on a busy but normal morning. With TSA PreCheck, that drops to 15 minutes. A checked bag lengthens the one before it.
The airport is off I-275 in Northern Kentucky, twenty minutes from downtown Cincinnati on a normal day and longer whenever the Brent Spence Bridge is not behaving. There is no rail; TANK's bus stops at the baggage claim level but is a city route.
The Terminal Garage is attached and a walk in, ValuPark and the Economy Lot are shuttles every fifteen minutes. The Rental Car Center is inside the terminal, one floor down from baggage claim at Ground Transport West, so returning a car is a walk with no shuttle in it.
For live waits, parking, and terminal maps, check the official CVG site.
Terminals, checkpoints and transit change; the official CVG site is the live source.
Save this CVG plan in Ready Time and it tells you when to start packing and when to leave for the airport.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Be at CVG two hours before a domestic departure and three before an international one. That is a solid default here. Trim it only on routes and hours you already know well. The plan above works back from there through security, bag drop, parking and the drive to a leave-by time.
The plan allows 25 minutes for a busy-but-normal standard lane. With TSA PreCheck it drops to 15 minutes, and you can edit either one to what you actually see. A checked bag lengthens the step before it. Checkpoint detail for CVG is in the section above.
Earlier than for a domestic one. International boarding starts 45 minutes before departure instead of 30, which pulls every step earlier. Use the airline desk for bags: documents get checked and counters often close an hour out. That also covers lap infants, unaccompanied minors, and oversized bags. If your boarding pass names a boarding time, match that.
Work backward from departure: boarding, time at the gate, the walk, security, bag drop, parking, then the drive (20 minutes in the default plan). Replace the drive with your own route. The leave-by moment is the first travel row, "Drive to CVG" by default.
Taking the train instead? The Amtrak station pages use the same kind of plan without security. The leave time calculator works for any appointment, and the wake-up time calculator runs it back to the alarm.
Two hours early still leaves the morning open: when to pack, when to leave. The plan keeps subtracting past the drive until it lands on a start time. Ready Time saves that chain and alerts you at each step, and can pick the flight up from your calendar.
Get a nudge at the right moment, while there's still time to act.
Each step gets its own alert, so you know what's next and how long you have.
“I tend to be overly optimistic when estimating how long things take, and this app has really helped me get it right.”App Store review
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Plans for the rest of the trip
Other airports