what is a "safe" time to fly out of NOLA?

[hlb76]

We are trying to plan our winter cruise and looking at NOLA as the homeport. What is a "safe" time to fly out? I'd love to catch a 11:22 flight its much cheaper and gets us home at a descent time so everyone can plan to head back to school/work the next day. Otherwise the next flight is 345. :(

[texascruzer]

I would love to know the answer to this question also. :D

[kchiumento]

I think that is tight. It might "happen" in a perfect world. If your ship gets in at 0800 and you are able to get off the ship right away and through customs quickly and catch a cab or car service to the airport and not have any traffic. You might be ok. However, we all know that never happens. I also heard there is some construction going on in the area of the cruise terminal. So that might slow you down also.

 

You can book the later flight and then if you get through quickly and to the airport you can always stand by for the earlier flight.

 

I have never cruised and have never been to New Orleans, but I worked for both TWA and United for 17 years. With the way check-in lines and TSA lines are now, I honestly would not risk it. However, we chose to cruise out of NOLA just to avoid having to fly. I would much rather drive 10 hours on my own time then to be at the mercy of the airline - and I work for them!

[rvsullivan]

If you are off the ship by 8-9 am you can be at the airport withing 30-45 min. Cab is flat $35 for two. We do NO every year and are off the ship by 7:30 and out of NO by 8:30 every time. If the ship is late or customs is running slow, all bets are off. Good luck.

[Sipsey]

Sounds borderline at best, to me. The airport is not really close to the cruise terminal and traffic can be bad at times. Once we had deboarding postponed because someone was missing, had evidently not gotten back on the ship at one of the ports of call. This was not New Orleans, but still. Either the cruise line did not know that someone was missing until debarkation day, or they just didn't bother with it until then. It was a mess, and some people probably didn't make their flights. All for one person who probably deliberately jumped ship. This could really mess up your day. Personally I would not chance it.

[hlb76]

I wish I could remember what our flights where the last 2 times we flew out of NOLA. It's not even he $80 per person price difference its the what do you do until 345 pm? Yes we could do some sight seeing then We have to lug our baggage or pay to have it check early which ads to the already over priced later ticket.

 

I know both of our last cruises we had zero issues getting off the ship and on our way. The last time we even killed as much time as we could before departing the ship and heading to the airport to sit for hours. What a boring airport to be stuck in.