savannah_boy

2 parents travelling with kids age 9 months, 11 and 15. Travel to the UK will involve internal US flight then transatlantic. Obviously I want to save money but the cheapest flights online are the ones with layovers in the US of 1 hour.
Is this enough time? (doubtful)
How long would you allow minimum for a layover (Atlanta/Washington/NY airports) with this travel scenario?

BTW I remember buying a flight online which connected in Frankfurt once. I missed the connection and the staff at that airport said I should not have been able to buy that flight as the layover time was not enough.

Thanks in advance

SultanOfSwing

One hour is pushing it. There is no margin of error for a delayed inbound flight or any other factor that might take up time on the way to the new gate (terminal change, bags not being checked all the way through, etc).

Personally, I try to leave at least 2-4 hours for a layover. The shorter end for domestic flights or for when bags don't need to be rechecked and longer times for international legs where there will be a chance of a terminal change.

It's not steered me wong yet.

Speedwell

One hour is not enough even for a single adult connecting in a large airport. Trust me. SultanofSwing's advice is good.

Bob

Definitely not enough for a international, with kids...pushing it for just an adult...

yellowroom

Agree - if you think about it, your plane on the first leg will be landing just as they are gearing up to start boarding the international leg. And they aim to close the gate 10-15 minutes before scheduled departure. Leaves no margin for delays whatsoever.

IMHO it is money well spent to get an earlier flight to allow for a decent layover time.

markonline1

If it was me, I wouldn't want to go much past 2 hours. 4 hours is far too long to be staying in an airport. I did an hour layover in Chicago going from LHR to Vegas and made it ok. I didn't have to pick up any bags or change terminal though. That said, 2 hours would be the time I was aiming for.

Do bags not get checked in to final destination from the US?

civilservant

2-3 hours, minimum, through somewhere like ATL.

cindyabs

Exactly, 30 yrs experience as an agent says no way jose

savannah_boy

Thanks for all the replies everyone. Further to this site such as faregeek offer flights that cover mutiple airlines ie a different airline on a different segment of the trip. Are these likely to be codeshare or something similar where baggage could be checked all the way through from smalltown USA via largetown USA and onto a British Airport?

markonline1

Whether a flight is codeshare or not shouldn't make a difference to whether your bags are checked through to final destination. Despite my post above, I must have picked up my bags at Chicago, as bags should be checked through to your UK destination on the way out, but you will probably have to pick your bags up when you land in the US and re check them in for your connecting flight when you come back.

penguinsix

Yes, you can through check the baggage to your final destination, often even with airlines that are not in the same alliance (they have agreements worked out). However, as noted above, the procedure for international arrivals is to clear immigration (and a line), wait for your baggage (and a line), then clear customs (sometimes a line) and then you re-dump your bags into the baggage system, just after Customs.

From touchdown to out the door, the absolute fastest I've gotten through US Customs (flying front row business class, first in line to the US citizen line, bag #3 out of the chute, no line at customs) was still about 45 minutes from actual touchdown to out the door of the international terminal. Other times have been 2 hours.

So really I don't think 1 hour will work. 2 at a minimum, 3 to be safe. Just depends on weather and other factors.

note: as for your routing, you might note that you might get hit for baggage fees on some legs of the flight, eventhough your US-UK flight is covered by the 2 bag rule. It depends how the flight is booked and who your first carrier is and who your 'longest carrier' is, and sometimes just how the agent is feeling. It's quite complicated but I don't think US carriers follow the same rules as to who is the baggage charging airline in a multi-leg international flight so you might want to double check that bit.

RICH

Not a great chance of this ending well for the outbound flight, but worse, if it is the same on return flight, immigration and customs have to be considered too.

That said, in June I went to UK. My return flight was from Dublin to JFK, with only an hour to get the last flight to Tampa.(No checked bags)

Pre clearance was a breeze in Dublin. The flight landed on time in JFK. The arrival gate was 3 min walk to the next departure gate. The JFK to TPA flight was delayed an hour or so and I ended up kicking my heels, after stressing about it all the way.

scrubbedexpat091

Is it the airline offering the connection or a 3rd party website/travel agent?

Guindalf

We're in London right now. Our flight was ATL-LHR through Toronto. We had just under two hours between flights and it was comfortable. However, everything was just about on time.

Our return is the same, but we have about 3 hours to get through customs and immigration. Hopefully, it'll be enough, but we won't know for sure until we get there next Wednesday - I'll let you know.

There's no kids for us to take into consideration, though.

As an aside, I don't think I've EVER had an outbound flight as easy as this one for getting through checkpoints! At ATL, we got straight through security will almost no line. At Toronto, we had to go through an immigration post and again, no line. When we arrived at Heathrow, no-one in front of us at immigration (used the EU line with the British passport) and, after about a 10 minute wait for baggage, straight through customs!

I hope the homeward flights are that easy!!

civilservant

Though ATL? No chance!