LeaveTime adds up seven parts of your trip - the ride to the airport, walking in from drop-off, bag drop, security, immigration where it applies, the walk to your gate, and time to spare - each as a range, not a single number. We run 5,000 simulated trips and show you leave times for a few different confidence levels, from a coin-flip up to a very safe 99%.
Every estimate adds up seven timed parts of your journey: getting to the kerb, walking in from drop-off, bag drop, security, immigration where it applies, the walk to your gate, and a buffer at the gate. Two deadlines are fixed to your flight's originally scheduled departure time - when bag drop closes and when the gate closes - and a live delay never moves them unless the airline has formally retimed the flight. We simulate 5,000 possible versions of your journey and read off the leave time that gets you there on time at each of three confidence levels. Where we can, the numbers come from named, real sources: live traffic from Google Routes, flight schedules from AeroDataBox, weather from Open-Meteo, public holidays from Nager.Date, and official airline check-in and boarding deadlines we've verified. Where a source doesn't cover something, we fall back to a calibrated typical range for that airport - and every trip you report back on after landing helps make that range more accurate for the next traveller.
Live traffic comes from Google Routes. Flight schedules and terminals come from AeroDataBox, when your flight is recognised. Airport-specific timing comes from priors we've built for major hubs, and from general large/medium/small airport patterns everywhere else - improving as more travellers report their real times. Security wait times, weather, and holidays feed in where available.
These are three fixed confidence levels. Safe (99%) leaves the most buffer, at roughly a 1% chance of a stressful rush. Balanced (90%) is a good default, at roughly 10%. Tight (75%) cuts it closer, at roughly 25%. Pick whichever trade-off between time and risk suits this particular trip.
Once you monitor a trip, we re-check traffic, weather, and your flight status every 10 minutes and notify you if it's time to leave sooner - or if you have more time than planned. Monitoring never moves your saved trip's bag-drop or gate deadlines; it only reacts to genuine, confirmed changes.
A few hours after your flight, we ask how long door-to-gate actually took. That's the ground truth that makes future estimates more accurate for everyone. Your answer stays tied to your account only long enough to thank you for it; for model training, it's aggregated and de-identified - see our Privacy Policy for details.