Almost missed the flight

Last Saturday I was traveling from Guwahati to Bangalore with SpiceJet flight number SG-529. The flight departs Guwahati at 2:35 PM. My hometown Morigaon is about 100km from the airport. One of our friends, who lives in Guwahati, invited us for lunch at their place on way to the airport. We planned to leave Morigaon at 8AM; but we were delayed and finally left home at 9AM. We reached my friends' apartment in Guwahati at around 11:15AM. They prepared a delicious lunch. We left his residence at 12:30PM. By the time we reached Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi Airport, it was 1:30PM.  I knew we were a bit late. But I didn't know that we were so late that I was about to miss the flight!

We got the boarding pass quickly, in about 10 minutes time. We were in the queue for security check by 1:45PM. There was separate queue for ladies and G went through the queue quickly. But the security check queue for men was too long. There were only two gates for security check for men. I found that six flights depart between 2:30PM and 3:30PM. I was in the queue till 2:10 PM and  sure to miss the flight. I heard my son crying from the other side by calling me. I tried to call my wife; but there was no network coverage. I wanted to tell her that all of us shouldn't miss the flight. At least they should fly to Bangalore. Finally I got her on the cell; but she refused to fly without me.

At around 2:20PM, I cleared the security check. There were seven more persons besides us. Finally we boarded the flight.

There is a new circular issued by some of the airlines in India that check-in counters will close 45 minutes before departure in six metros and boarding gates will close 25 minutes before departure. In other cities, check-in counters will close 30 minutes before departure and boarding will close 15 minutes departure. This assumes that we can clear the security check in 10 or 15 minutes time. That's impossible. Security check is the real bottleneck and as in my case last Saturday, it may take more than 30 minutes.

What I've learned from my experience? It's important that we reach the airport two hours before departure even when we're traveling on a domestic flight. Else, we may end up missing the flight.