Free planning tool · Not a taxi
Know exactly when to leave home to catch your flight
Live flight + live traffic from your postcode. No booking, no driver, no account.
Example searches
Your flight
Drive from you
Leave time
How it works
Leave at the right time, without a sprint to bag drop.
- 1
Find your flight
A flight number, or just “Manchester to Faro Saturday”.
- 2
Say where you're leaving from
Your postcode, and whether you're checking a bag.
- 3
Get a leave time
Drive, drop-off, airport time and bag-drop close, stacked up.
Flying from Heathrow, Gatwick or Manchester?
This is
A calculator for the person flying out. Free, no account, no booking.
This isn’t
A taxi, transfer or parking company. We never take payment for a journey.
Frequently asked questions
How does FlightLeave work out when I should leave?
We take your flight's scheduled departure, work back to when you should be inside the terminal (earlier if you're checking a bag, earlier again for long-haul), then subtract a few minutes to drop off and your traffic-aware drive time. What's left is the time to leave home.
How much time do you allow at the airport?
For short-haul flights: 90 minutes before departure with cabin bags only, 120 minutes if you're checking a bag. For long-haul: 150 and 180 minutes. These are our own planning allowances, not live security queues. We also check you're there before bag drop usually closes (45 minutes before short-haul, 60 before long-haul), but your airline's own cut-off is the one that counts.
My flight is delayed. Should I leave later?
No, and we won't tell you to. Check-in and bag drop usually close on the scheduled time even when the flight is running late, so we build your leave time from the schedule and show the delay separately.
Does it use live traffic?
Yes. Drive times come from a traffic-aware routing service using your starting point and the departure airport. If that service is briefly unavailable we fall back to a standard estimate and say so on screen.
Do I need to know the flight number?
No. Type something like “Manchester to Faro Saturday 07:10” and pick your flight from the real matches. The flight number is quicker if you have it.
Can you book me a taxi?
No. FlightLeave is a calculator, not a taxi or transfer company. After you get your leave time we show links to a couple of transfer companies in case you want one — you book and pay them directly, and we may earn a commission.
Do you store my location?
No. Your location or postcode is used once to work out your drive time and is not saved to a database. We don't send it to analytics either.