How early should I get to ORD?
Be at ORD two hours before a domestic departure and three before an international one.
Be at ORD two hours before a domestic departure and three before an international one.
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A maps app covers the drive to ORD. 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 53min
Be at ORD two hours before a domestic departure 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.
O'Hare is a major connecting hub, so checkpoint crowds follow the banks of departures: early morning and late afternoon are the crush. Terminals 1, 2, and 3 share one security envelope and Terminal 5 does not, so which terminal you fly from changes how the rest of your trip goes.
Terminals 1, 2, and 3 are walkable to each other; Terminal 5 (most international flights) is a separate building reached by the airport train, so confirm which one your airline uses before you plan the walk. Crossing between Terminal 5 and the rest airside is only possible on a shuttle that runs limited hours; outside them it means leaving and screening again.
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 CTA Blue Line runs from the Loop to O'Hare around the clock and skips the Kennedy Expressway, which is the main reason drives to ORD are hard to predict. If you drive, add time for remote parking and the shuttle before you reach the terminal. Terminal 2 is slated to be replaced by the new Global Terminal, so airline-to-terminal assignments here are mid-change.
For live waits, parking, and terminal maps, check the official ORD site.
Terminals, checkpoints and transit change; the official ORD site is the live source.
Be at ORD two hours before a domestic departure 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 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 ORD is under Security at ORD 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 (40 minutes in the default plan). Replace the drive with your own route. The leave-by moment is the first travel row, "Drive to ORD" by default.
Taking the train instead? The Amtrak station pages use the same kind of plan without security. Flying from somewhere not listed? The airport leave time calculator has the same rows with your own numbers, and the wake-up time calculator runs it back to the alarm.
Start the plan in the app, and the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island show the time left, with a bar that fills as each step passes.
Glance at it in the terminal without opening the app.
Every step also gets its own alert, and sharing the plan gives whoever is driving the same leave time, with alerts on their phone.
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You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Plans for the rest of the trip
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