Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Your flight out of John F. Kennedy International leaves at a fixed time. Enter the departure time from your ticket, adjust the drive and the steps, and see when to leave and when to start packing.
Every row is editable. Tap the departure time or any duration and the whole plan recomputes backward. Boarding is a row like the rest, so the plan shows when it starts instead of asking you to know it. The first travel row (drive, ride, or train) is your leave-by time; the top row is when the trip actually starts.
The 45-minute drive here is a typical run from New York without traffic. In the app you can replace that number: set John F. Kennedy International as the destination, choose driving, and Apple Maps fills in the time from wherever you're leaving.
Still check traffic for the hour you’ll go (check the real drive to JFK). The row stays editable, and every step before the drive moves when the number changes.
If the flight is on your calendar, Ready Time can pull the destination from the event.
The AirTrain connects every terminal to the subway at Howard Beach and to the LIRR at Jamaica; the LIRR from Manhattan is usually the most predictable path. If someone drives you, they still hand you to the terminal loop, which crawls at peak. Terminal 1 is being rebuilt in phases, so gate and roadway assignments have been moving. Confirm your terminal close to the day of travel, not just when you booked.
For things that change day to day (security waits, parking availability, terminal maps), check the official JFK site. The plan above works back from your departure time to when each step needs to start.
. Terminals and transit change; the official site is the live source.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Plan to be at the airport two hours before a domestic flight and three before an international one. At an airport this size, treat those as a floor: they assume a normal day, not a holiday crush or a long security line. The Van Wyck Expressway is the hard part at JFK: the last few miles can take as long as the rest of the trip. Five terminals are open and most do not connect after security, so a terminal mix-up means the AirTrain and a second screening.
Each terminal runs its own checkpoints and they don't share lines, so the wait depends on which terminal your airline uses, and ongoing terminal construction periodically moves airlines around, so double-check yours. The AirTrain is free between terminals, so fixing that mistake doesn't cost you money, just time. Treat the 25-minute security row in the plan above as a starting point you can edit: TSA PreCheck usually shortens it, and a checked bag usually lengthens the step before it.
It changes both ends of the chain. Boarding opens earlier: the “International” chip above the plan starts it 45 minutes before departure instead of 30, which pulls every step above it earlier too. Check-in usually means the airline desk instead of a kiosk, since documents get checked and counters often close an hour before departure, so choose “Airline desk” under Bags and give that row room. That choice also covers anyone a kiosk can't help: lap infants, unaccompanied minors, oversized bags. If your boarding pass names a boarding time, edit the boarding row until its start time matches it.
Work backward from the departure time on your ticket, in order: boarding, time at the gate, the walk, security, bag drop, parking, then the drive, 45 minutes in the default plan. Swap that drive for your own route at the hour you'll actually leave. The calculator above runs the math; the leave-by moment is the first travel row, "Drive to JFK" in the default plan.
Yes. Sharing means everyone works back from the same leave-by row, instead of one person holding the morning in their head. Send the plan, they tap once, and every step gets its own alert on their phone. It's also worth sending to whoever is driving you to JFK, since your departure time is their deadline too.
Yes. Build this plan once in the app and every step gets a notification at its start time, including start packing and leave now. It can detect flights from your calendar, and the alerts show the countdown to departure.
If you are taking the train instead, the Amtrak station pages use the same kind of plan without a security line, so the answer there is closer to thirty minutes than two hours. The generic leave time calculator does the same math for any appointment, and the wake-up time calculator runs it all the way back to the alarm.
Arriving two hours early is useful advice, but it still leaves the morning open: when to shower, when to start packing, when to put the bags in the car. The plan above keeps subtracting past the drive, through packing and getting ready, until it lands on a start time you can act on.
Ready Time does this for the whole trip. Set the departure time as the deadline, list the real steps, and get an alert when each one is due to start. It can even 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.
“A key part of my planning process. Well worth the investment.”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