Sonoma to SFO........how long?
 

My husband and I will be returning to the SFO airport from Sonoma for a 1:00 P.M. flight. What time should we leave Sonoma to have time to return rental car, and get to the airport by 11:30? Thanks for your input.

Do you mean the city of Sonoma -- or someplace else in Sonoma County/wine country?

From Sonoma, count on a minimum 90 minutes. I'd give it 2 hours to be on the safe side.

From the City of Sonoma at that time of day, 2 hours should be safe. If you're talking Sonoma County in general it depends whether you are in Healdsburg, Santa Rosa, on the coast at Jenner or in the Russian River area like Gurenville. Santa Rosa or Healdsburg, 2 hours is still OK, but the other spot, better add some time.

Depends on your route too: traffic jam, accidents, if you need to fill up, miss the rental car signs (easy to doflying International, TSA issues) etc.

We plan on 3 hours which we found to be better: rental car companies are all offsite of airport and you have to take the tram from rental car co to SFO proper.

We were flying out of SFO having come from Healdsburg. The trip was ~ 2 (+ a little more ) hours.

I don't know what airline you are flying but this was just a few weeks ago (late June) and we found ourselves in the longest security line I have ever been in. I was sure something was up. When we got to the front of the line, TSA person said it has been like this all summer. We were flying Southwest and a lot of people were worried that they were not going to make it to the gate in time. No one in authority was helping. Passengers were asking each other to let them ahead based on flt departure time.

How long did the security line take? The very longest line I have ever experienced at SFO was 30 minutes.

This one took 45 minutes.

Thank you for your input. We will be going to the airport from Sonoma city and will be flying Delta. to be on the safe side we will give ourselves the full 3 hours. Thanks again.