How much time to leave for Lisbon airport
 

I was rather shocked when the pilot on our incoming flight said we should get to the Lisbon airport for the outbound flight 3 hours in advance. Since we are leaving at 7 am that would mean 4 am - is that really necessary (I was figuring on 2 hours). and while we are talking early flights - is there anywhere once you clear security to grab a roll or coffee before boarding or should we pack something up the night before. thanks as always

I literally got back from Lisbon last week! First of all it's amazing, you'll have a fantastic time!

I flew back from terminal 2 on Ryan Air (I don't know if terminals and airlines vary).
We got to the airport 2 hours before our flight was due to depart and check in wasn't even open. I definitely wouldn't recommend getting there 3 hours prior to departing! The airport in terminal 2 is very small, once you go through security there are a few cafes to grab some food and a Mac Donald's so don't worry about that. It did get quite busy however and there weren't many spare seats, I think that's because our flight was delayed.

I would still recommend getting there about 2 hours before departure, to be safe but don't bother rushing to be there 3 hours before. You will be bored!

Hope this helps.

A couple of years ago I had an early flight out of Lisbon - but as none of the desks open much before 5am I'd not bother rushing to get there before that.

It's a smallish airport, but there are still more than a few places to grab a coffee or breakfast.

I have flown out of there when two hours was plenty and when with two hours we squeaked by.
The counters do not open really early but people line up quickly.

Two trips ago they handed out papers in the check in line that stated if you did not allow at least 90 minutes you would miss your flight. Also we were able to check in online and that kind of expedited the process. It may help. We were flying TAP so maybe that did not help.

Get to the airport in the two hours and line up. Then take your time having a coffee when you pass security.

We flew out of Lisbon on Air France and they did not open up very early, but as someone else stated there was a long line waiting for them to open. I would rather be there early instead of rushing at the last minute.

We were just there this am. Had a 10:30 am UA flight to US. We got to the airport a bit after 8. Line was quick at UA. Security was maybe 10-15 minutes. We then took our time walking to passport control and was a bit surprised to see the very long line there. This was probably around 8:30. Then the walk to our gate was a long one. In any case we still had plenty of time. And there were plenty of places to buy food or stop and have coffee etc.

hope your ride home is easy - thanks for the update. will probably leave lots of time just in case. the weather turned a bit cooler last night,but could be because we are in Bussaco. I had considered the Tryp hotel but we went for the raddisson Blu as the Tryp looked like it had weird bathrooms (by our standards) sounds like we made the right decision. hope you got some sleep (:

Ah, Bussaco - looking forward to hearing about your time in that area. If you eat pork don't miss trying the black pork and the suckling pig which you will see everywhere. Not really a pork eater, but tried both and they were delicious.

and the final verdict is...we decided to err on the side of caution, got to the airport about 4:30 - it was a little confusing at first figuring out how the check in works and which line to get in. What it looked like to me was that with Lufthansa at least the check in line corresponds to your gate. That took a while as the airplane had an issue with how much luggage it could handle, but then security was fast and we had a good hour to sit and get coffee/rolls before the flight. Don't know if it would have been more difficult though if our flight had been later. good luck to all.

Just to add to the debate, and on the side of those recommending 3 hours, we allowed between 2.5 and 3 hours for our Sata Airlines flight home from Lisbon last year, and we're glad we did! As mentioned in some of the posts, there can be a long line for passport control which was the case when we were leaving last May. We were a bit ticked because none of the check-in agents mentioned the need for going through passport control and we were totally surprised by the long line. There were people in the line who were being paged by their airlines, i.e., their planes were ready for boarding and they weren't there. One gal behind us was quite upset as she figured she was going to miss her flight. We let her go ahead of us, so we hoped she made it.

Don't know if that's of any help, but I felt compelled to relay our experiences. BTW - we made it okay, but others didn't!

Happy travels,
Dale