Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Your flight out of Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles without traffic. In the app you can replace that number: set Los Angeles 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 LAX). 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.
LA traffic is the biggest wildcard here: whatever your maps app says, it can change by 20 minutes between when you check and when you leave. Checking bags and returning rentals both add real time here, and rideshare pickup happens at a dedicated lot. The FlyAway bus runs from Van Nuys and Union Station on its own schedule, and Metro's C and K lines reach the LAX/Metro Transit Center with a free shuttle to every terminal. Either one takes traffic out of the estimate.
For things that change day to day (security waits, parking availability, terminal maps), check the official LAX 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 drive is the wildcard at LAX: the horseshoe loop in front of the terminals can add half an hour by itself at peak, so put your buffer on the road instead of the checkpoint. Once you are through security most terminals connect on foot, so a gate change across the horseshoe is a walk rather than another checkpoint. Getting dropped at the wrong terminal before security costs you the most time.
Almost every terminal has its own checkpoint (Terminal 2 screens at Terminal 3, and Terminal 5 is closed for reconstruction until 2028), and lines vary a lot between the rest. Know your terminal before you leave, because correcting a terminal mistake at LAX means the loop, a shuttle, or a long walk. Where those corridors connect, clearing at a quieter terminal and walking is a real option when your own line looks ugly. Treat the 30-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 LAX" 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 LAX, 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.
“It has helped me tremendously to manage my timeblindness, and I tell people about it all the time.”Ready Time user, 2021
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Plans for the rest of the trip