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When to leave for LGA.

Your flight out of LaGuardia 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.

The plan in Ready Time

  1. Set the deadline. That's the time you need to be ready.
  2. Add your steps and how long each one really takes.
  3. Ready Time works backward and gives every step a start time.
Departure
15 min Final pack & check 12:30 PM
30 min Drive to LGA 12:45 PM
15 min Park & walk in 1:15 PM
15 min Bag drop & boarding pass 1:30 PM
20 min Security at LGA 1:45 PM
10 min Walk to the gate 2:05 PM
15 min At the gate early 2:15 PM
30 min Boarding 2:30 PM
Departure 3:00 PM

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.

Travel time to LGA

The 30-minute drive here is a typical run from New York without traffic. In the app you can replace that number: set LaGuardia as the destination, choose driving, and Apple Maps fills in the time from wherever you're leaving.

Home LGA
🚗 30 min
🚗 Drive 🚶 Walk 🚴 Cycle
30 min Drive to LGA

Still check traffic for the hour you’ll go (check the real drive to LGA). 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.

Getting to LaGuardia

There's no direct rail link: it's a cab, a rideshare, or the Q70 bus from the subway at Roosevelt Avenue. Whatever the mode, cross-borough traffic is the input that matters, and it swings hard between 20 minutes and an hour. There is still no rail to LGA (the AirTrain plan was cancelled), so the bus and the road are the entire list.

For things that change day to day (security waits, parking availability, terminal maps), check the official LGA 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.

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Ready Time

You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.

How early should I get to LGA?

Two hours before a domestic departure is a solid default, three for international. Trim it only on routes and hours you already know well. The rebuilt terminals are a genuine upgrade, but the roads feeding them are the same , and it's the Grand Central Parkway and the BQE that set your arrival time. Commercial flying happens in the rebuilt Terminals B and C; Terminal A, the Art Deco Marine Air Terminal, is closed to the public and now houses a private operator, so the choice on the ground is only B or C.

How long is security at LGA?

The new Terminal B and Terminal C checkpoints move well outside of the morning shuttle-flight rush, when the business crowd hits them all at once. A pedestrian path links Terminals B and C, but it sits outside security: switch terminals and you screen again, so the walk saves you the shuttle, but not the checkpoint. Treat the 20-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.

Does flying international out of LGA change this?

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.

When should I leave for LGA?

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, 30 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 LGA" in the default plan.

Can I share the plan with whoever I'm flying with?

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 LGA, since your departure time is their deadline too.

Can I get an alert when it's time to leave?

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.

Share one leave time with everyone on the trip

Whoever is driving sees the same 12:45 PM leave-by that you do, not just the 3:00 PM on the ticket.

They tap once, and every step gets its own alert on their phone.

👥 Shared by Rosa
✈️ Flight from LGA
15 min Final pack & check 12:30 PM
30 min Drive to LGA 12:45 PM
15 min Park & walk in 1:15 PM
Departure 3:00 PM
✈️ Flight from LGA
15 min Final pack & check 12:30 PM
30 min Drive to LGA 12:45 PM
15 min Park & walk in 1:15 PM

When to start getting ready

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.

Ready Time 12:30 PM
Final pack & check. Departure in 2h 30m
Ready Time 1:30 PM
Bag drop & boarding pass. Departure in 1h 30m
Ready Time 2:30 PM
Boarding. Departure in 30m

Alerts when it's time to start

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.”
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Ready Time

You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.

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