Originally Posted by
djcutcher
Despite several trips to Asia each year for the past ~6-7 years---so you'd think I'd know--I *still* unthinkingly accepted a less than one hour connect in SFO (coming up from LAX) on an itin to HKG.
Given the changes to flight schedules that happen so frequently at the ever possibly fog-bound SFO, you'd think: (a)
knowledgable 1K phone agents would ALWAYS recommend at least a 2-hour connect period, and (b) I would have learned my lesson long ago NOT to accept anything less.
But, oh, noooooo, when I ticketed some weeks ago I never thought to request an arrival at SFO that allowed more leeway than the ~55 minutes or so between flights as currently ticketed.
I hear I can request a confirmed same day standby, by phone, three hours before an earlier flight that will get me to SFO with a ~2 hour wait. Will do---but don't YOU get caught in similar straits!
Same situation almost ruined my honeymoon last year. Going to LHR via SFO from SBA in NC. Had 90 minute connection time. Flow control into SFO because of fog in June delayed the flight over two hours. Had to do a last minute flight change and go via LAX instead, run to new plane (it was leaving in 10 minutes, TA manually took the bags to the plane, got to love SBA) and then run from T8-T7 to barely catch a 777 (illegal connection, but I told the GA we had to go and chance it) and worst of all had to sit in Y since those were only seats available, since it was summertime TATL flight. Had we missed the flight to LHR we would have missed the connection to ATH and the whole trip would have been screwed.
So this time around flying to NRT thru SFO in F, I made sure there was a 2.5 hour window at SFO to work with, plus a second "backup flight" that would arrive at SFO 40 minutes before departure of the NRT flight in case the problem was mechanical and not fog related.