For years, showing up at the airport three hours before a short-haul flight was the thing younger travellers lovingly teased their parents about. Baby boomers — born between 1946 and 1964 — built a reputation for queuing, checking bags and browsing duty-free long before anyone else had left the house. An AARP study back in 2016 confirmed it: boomers routinely arrived at least a couple of hours before boarding.

Fast forward to 2026, and the joke has backfired. American Express' Global Travel Trends report found that 75% of surveyed millennials and Gen Zers now arrive hours ahead of their flights too. The difference is the reason. Boomers showed up early out of caution; younger travellers are doing it for the lounge.

The logic makes sense once you see how lounge access has changed. What used to be the preserve of business class flyers and road-warrior frequent fliers is now routinely bundled into credit card perks. Points and card benefits can get you through the door, and once inside you get comfortable seating, hot food and drinks, reliable Wi-Fi and a quiet place to work or decompress — all included rather than paid for at the gate-side bar prices. Suddenly those two hours of buffer time stop feeling like dead time.

There's a cultural shift underneath it too. Younger travellers already handle everything digitally — mobile boarding passes, app-based flight alerts, trips booked off social media rather than through an agent. With check-in streamlined, arriving early isn't about stress reduction so much as it is about claiming a perk. And this is a generation that prioritises travel heavily: the same Amex report found 74% of millennials and Gen Zers consider travel a non-negotiable expense, with many willing to trade other job benefits for more of it.

It's a funny full-circle moment. The same TikTok crowd that championed "airport theory" in 2025 — the trend of testing how late you can possibly reach the gate — has now swung hard in the opposite direction. The boomer habit survived the mockery and won a new audience.

For anyone planning a trip, the takeaway is practical: if you hold a travel rewards card, check whether lounge access is included before your next flight. It can turn a tedious layover or an early start into the best part of the travel day. And if you're a boomer who's spent a decade being ribbed for early arrivals — congratulations, the kids finally get it.