One of the reasons I don't travel as much is due to this.
I used to live in the peninsula in SFBA. I was about 20-30 minutes away from SFO. Unless it was an international flight or I had checked luggage, I would never get to the airport before the flight started boarding. I would walk through security at a lightning pace (SFO is one of those airports where sometimes TSA precheck is longer than regular!) and get to my flight just as my boarding group was getting called.
It was so insanely efficient. I never spent a moment not moving in the airport. I'd often spend more time waiting on the plane to deboard than I would in the airport when leaving too.
I miss SFO. I live in NYC for now and all the NYC airports suck for the fact they all take about an hour to get to (from Manhattan) and they all regularly have large and inefficient security lines with theater that is only rivaled by Belgian airports.
I worked for someone once (pre-9/11) who would do the go to airport 30 minutes before flight sort of thing. Absolutely hated it. Airport was close to downtown Boston but still not how I like to catch planes even if delays are rarely an issue.
When I lived in Kyiv and airports were still a thing, flying from Zhuliany was a bliss. Something like 30 minutes from the apartment door to sitting at the gate. The fact that it's small and in city limits was a deciding factor.
Boryspil' is twice the distance from the city center (whatever you pick for city center in Kyiv) and is quite nice and modern airport with all the problems of a big modern airport -- it's huge, lines are long and unpredictable and it doubles as a mall.
I used to live in the peninsula in SFBA. I was about 20-30 minutes away from SFO. Unless it was an international flight or I had checked luggage, I would never get to the airport before the flight started boarding. I would walk through security at a lightning pace (SFO is one of those airports where sometimes TSA precheck is longer than regular!) and get to my flight just as my boarding group was getting called.
It was so insanely efficient. I never spent a moment not moving in the airport. I'd often spend more time waiting on the plane to deboard than I would in the airport when leaving too.
I miss SFO. I live in NYC for now and all the NYC airports suck for the fact they all take about an hour to get to (from Manhattan) and they all regularly have large and inefficient security lines with theater that is only rivaled by Belgian airports.