Northwest WorldPerks (Discontinued Program) - Long Connection Times at IAH

I just completed a mileage run on CO from Southern California to London Gatwick via IAH.

Continental's 777 airplane is one fine bird, even in coach. 3-3-3 seating is great. But travelers should re-evaluate CO's unrealistic connection times at IAH embedded in the current timetables.

Returning from LGW to IAH, CO allocated an hour to get through US Customs and make it to my connecting flight in IAH's new Terminal E. I didn't realize that winds aloft make the westbound leg a full two hours longer than the eastbound leg. The 4:30PM IAH arrival time listed in the published timetable is literally wheels-down time with no safety margin. The flight from LGW->IAH was more than 10 hours long.

IAH's new Terminal E is located in Egypt, Texas with no conveyors or buses from the Mickey Leland international arrival building. You walk about a mile through a parking garage with all of your luggage. You must have all of your luggage rescreened at Terminal E security.

A more realistic connection time for inbound international flights is two hours. I *****ed to one of the customer service agents at IAH and the response was "Yeah, we know about it. We tell the bosses about these problems and they reply that these are time goals we should work harder to achieve. Fortunately there are always later connecting flights when you miss the intended one..."

For legal international-to-domestic connecting times, there's a single standard set.... if you're connecting from an RJ onto some C concourse flight, then an hour is fine... 2 hours is excessive. You had the misfortune of being an extreme case of deplaning one of very very few IAH widebodies, and connecting at E. In such cases, better judgment of the passenger or booking agent should be exercised when choosing a connection.

Customs/Immigration is really a crapshot-- a few days ago I was seated in the VERY LAST row of a NW DC10 into DTW... yet I made it from the jetway through immigration and customs in about 12 min. total!!

Interesting to see this. CO online booked me with a 57 minute international to domestic connection. I questioned it twice and was told it was legal. The schedule has been slightly revised and it is now 70 minutes. The saving grace may be that I am coming in on the AMS flight, which arrives much later than most of the other European flights.
I'll see what happens. If it breaks, it won't be the first night I've spent in the CO wing of the airport Holiday Inn at CO's expense.
tom

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by jimolson:
I didn't realize that winds aloft make the westbound leg a full two hours longer than the eastbound leg. The 4:30PM IAH arrival time listed in the published timetable is literally wheels-down time with no safety margin. </font>

Schedules take into account summer and winter wind patterns..... westbound winter flight times will always be longer due to the stronger jetstream. Heading into a 100 mph headwind for 8 hours will cost you 800 miles. Travelling 400 mph it will add 2 hours to your no-wind time. Eastbound with that same wind will give you a 800 mile "benefit" and reduce the no-wind time by roughly the same amount (actually less, because you enjoy those winds for only 6+ hours, but that's higher math at this point).

The published time on your arrival/schedule is "at the gate". While you might have had wheels down at 4:30, it was merely a coincidence that it matched the published time. All schedule times reflect expected gate-taxi out-flighttime-taxi in-gate. Since winds vary daily, sometimes you'll be on the short end of that, sometimes on the long end of it, and "on average" close to it most of the time.....all predicated on average, or historical wind data.

Sometimes when departing on a transatlantic flight plan you will be held on the ground for a certain time awaiting your "slot time". Even though you might be delayed on the ground in LGW for an hour, you'll generally almost always still arrive on time. I believe slot time assignment is generated with ACTUAL enroute times for that day built into getting to your destination at scheduled time.......it seems to work out that way most of the time in my experience.