Airport hacks I wish I knew when I started travelling

Hello guys, welcome to Wundercity. Today I've got some airport hacks for you. I've been to quite a few airports and I feel that there are so many things I wish I knew when I started traveling that I want to make sure that you know before you start traveling. So today I'm going to share these hacks with you. Hopefully you'll be a little bit better prepared than I was. Everything from which seat you should pick when you're checking in, how to get through security the fastest and what you should do at the airport while you're waiting for your flight. So let's start. Finally at the airport I am so excited let's go check in and drop this luggage off. So first things first I hope you've checked in online before you head to the airport. Normally you get a notification about this one day prior to boarding. I like to check in online as fast as I get this notification because if I'm able to select my seat the selection will obviously be better than if I'm the last person to pick my seat as I'm standing at the airport two hours before the flight. So which seat should you pick you may ask. Pick a seat close to the wing if you don't like turbulence as this is the part of the plane where you can feel the turbulence the least. Choose a seat as far to the front of the plane as you can if you have a tight schedule. Let's say you have to get off the plane quickly in order to get your next flight. Having a seat in the front of the plane means less people need to get off the plane before it's your turn. We've all seen when the seatbelt sign goes off everyone stands up and it takes forever to get off the plane. On long-haul flights avoid seats close to the bathroom areas as these tend to become hangout zones and no one wants to try to relax, watch a movie, eat their food and just I don't know be in their zone when the toilet kiwi is standing right next to you. No one wants that. And if you're traveling with a partner pick the seat closest to window and the seat closest to the aisle. That makes the seat in the middle less attractive for anyone else who has to pick their seat. So hopefully if you're lucky if the plane is not full that seat will be empty and you have the whole row to yourself. If there's someone sitting there you can obviously just ask if they want to swap seats so you can sit together. Anyways when you arrive at the airport head over to the self-service check-in machines if you can and get a copy of your boarding pass. Even though you have this QR code or your boarding pass on your phone I always like to have a copy on paper in case your phone dies, in case you lose your phone, you never know what's gonna happen you always have a backup solution. And also make sure you get a luggage receipt. This is what they use in case you lose your luggage to be able to track it. Let's head over to security. Oh no the queue is so long we're never gonna get through. If you want to travel light but you want to bring quite a few liquids, in fact more liquids that you can fit into that see-through plastic bag you need to get through security, go to the duty-free website a few days prior to your flight. Pick out the products and choose pick up in store. Make sure they pick the right airport and that it's behind the security and also make sure you pick one or two days prior to your flight. Sometimes these pickup orders arrive in the store in the afternoon so if you have a morning flight your order won't be ready for you when you get there. If the queue is never ending long you can always start preparing while you're waiting for your turn. Take off your jacket, take off your belt, make sure your water bottle is completely empty and you can start pre-packing your liquids into that see-through plastic bag. Sometimes though you won't get a hold of those plastic bags until you're quite far up in the queue so you can bring one from home just make sure it's the right size or you can save one from your previous travels. If you see that your plane starts boarding while you are in the queue tell a staff member and they might be able to help you get through faster. And I have a little experiment for you. They say that you can actually see which line is going to be fastest just by these two steps. Number one, business travelers normally know the procedure and they have quite little to no hand luggage with them so obviously they will get through faster than older people and families. They tend to spend longer to get through. The second one is, did you know most people's domestic side is right? So when we have to choose between left and right we tend to go right without even thinking about it. Which means that the left queue will be shorter and hopefully the business travelers pick that queue. Anyway so if you want to pick the fastest queue pick the queue to the left and the one with the business travelers. We made it! But what are we gonna do now up until boarding? If you think you've got a little bit too much hand luggage with you and think I'm not going to make it through the gate, go to the duty-free store and buy something small, a magazine, a water bottle or some candy and make sure you get a plastic bag. Put your extra stuff in it because those duty-free bags normally don't count as an extra piece of hand luggage. If you have a really long time to kill, let's say you have a really long layover, it can be worth looking into going to an airport lounge. It might sound a bit expensive but you only pay that one-time fee and you'll have unlimited access to food, drinks, they have hangout zones, sometimes they have small offices or work rooms, quiet rooms and they also have showers sometimes. So paying that amount of money might be cheaper than having to spend endless hours at your gate buying one meal after the other, one coffee and another in order to kill time and not fall asleep. And when talking about showers, some bigger airports, in fact most bigger airports, have showers available. Mostly they are free, sometimes you have to pay a small fee but if you want to freshen up a little bit while on the go, bring a small towel, a small shampoo bottle and some fresh underwear and you can take a shower. Just make sure you also bring a small plastic bag so you can put the wet towel in for the rest of your journey. Make sure you check which gate your flight is leaving from and boarding time in between on the screens. Don't just rely on what's standing on your boarding pass. Sometimes they change the gate last minute, sometimes boarding time changes, so make sure you check it and pay attention to the announcements. If you want to be prepared for your arrival at your destination and want to bring some cash, consider not withdrawing or doing currency exchange at the airport as that will be way more expensive than doing it before you get to the airport or when you arrive at your destination. And you should also bring a power bank. Me personally, I don't trust all those power outlets that you can find everywhere. You never know if they will be modified to steal your personal information or to install bugs on your devices. And that is all for my airport hacks, guys. I really hope that you enjoyed this video and perhaps you learned something new. Let me know if you have any other airport hacks that I didn't mention or maybe you want me to make another video on something else. Let me know in the comments, please. And make sure you subscribe to this channel for more travel motivation, inspiration and information. If you want to stay on my channel a little longer, you can watch some of my other videos popping up here. If not, I hope to see you in another video. Thank you very much for watching. Bye bye!