Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Your flight out of O'Hare 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 Gate chip starts on the longer answer so you have enough time before you know your gate. Change it once your boarding pass shows which gates you’re on.
The 40-minute drive here is a typical run from Chicago without traffic. In the app you can replace that number: set O'Hare 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 ORD). 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 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 things that change day to day (security waits, parking availability, terminal maps), check the official ORD 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. 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. 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, 40 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 ORD" 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 ORD, 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