Originally Posted by SFflyer123
The most tactful way to do this is to first do a search yourself. For intance, if you need to arrive for a dinner at 4:30pm, and you know that a United (or whatever your airline of choice is) arrives at 4:10, ask them, "Can you see anything that arrives around 4:00?" Invariably, they will say, "Yes, the United flight gets in around then. Would you like me to book that for you?
20 minutes from arrival to dinner is cutting it very close, unless dinner is in an airport restaurant. Even then, there are flight delays, delays getting out of the airplane / airport, time spent figuring out and finding ground transportation, etc..
I think the key words in the quoted post are "need to arrive ... at ..." It doesn't say that's when the dinner is. 4:30 would be really early for a business dinner. The dinner itself could be at 6 in this hypothetical example, or even later.