Flights Out Of San Juan, Puerto Rico

[morrisretired]

Arriving back at San Juan, PR  after a 10-Day R/T Southern Cruise on the NCL Epic 04/01/20 around 5:30 am. What would be a safe timeline for booking Flights out of the San Juan Airport back to the States? The SWA prices have dropped, and we are going to rebook our original flights made over 6 months ago.   

[rjm11]

the two times we sailed out of San Juan we had really long lines coming through customs.  If you get a porter (who hang out all the way to the right of the big room full of luggage) you can get through much quicker (they have their own custom lines)... but even still it took at least 30-45 minutes to get through.  The line without the porter was over 2 hours. We did get off the ship pretty late though (maybe 9:00?) so maybe it was quicker earlier- but by that time it was really backed up. We had flights at 1:00 and were fine, but I wouldn't have wanted much earlier.  There are also additional lines at the airport because you have to get your bags scanned by the agriculture "police" too... before you can check them in. 

 

 

[kelib]

I would add with all the potential extra health screenings that may happen I would error on the side of caution and give yourself more time. I have also hit horrendous lines with TSA and that was with Pre-Check 

[morrisretired]

Thank both of you for your replies! We are in the Haven where you can be the first off, and also have TSA Precheck for US only. But I think we will keep the 1:40 pm flight out of San Juan to be safe. Just in case there are of any delays disembarking because of Corona Virus, or at the Airport. Thanks again!

[rjm11]

10 minutes ago, morrisretired said:

Thank both of you for your replies! We are in the Haven where you can be the first off, and also have TSA Precheck for US only. But I think we will keep the 1:40 pm flight out of San Juan to be safe. Just in case there are of any delays disembarking because of Corona Virus, or at the Airport. Thanks again!

I think that's a good thought.  We too were haven and TSA precheck, and were still tighter for our 1:00 flight than I thought we'd be.  Again, it was probably because we had a nice last haven breakfast, and then had the concierge take us off around 8:45 or 9:00, but the lines were so long once we got off the boat, even without having to wait to actually disembark.

[morrisretired]

13 hours ago, rjm11 said:

I think that's a good thought.  We too were haven and TSA precheck, and were still tighter for our 1:00 flight than I thought we'd be.  Again, it was probably because we had a nice last haven breakfast, and then had the concierge take us off around 8:45 or 9:00, but the lines were so long once we got off the boat, even without having to wait to actually disembark.

Thanks for replying to my question. We did rebook the original 1:40 pm R/T flight on SWA, which saved the 4 of us $740. Nice to get credit to use on some future flights. On our 7:00 am Saturday morning SWA flight from LAS back to AUS, there was only 46 passengers for 175 seats. Told not to go past row 21 to balance the plane. Thanks again!