Originally Posted by
Alzarius
Hope someone can help me out, and thanks in advance.
I will be travelling to Switzerland via London in March next year. The itinerary planned is:
SFO to LHR (arrive 11:25) by United Airlines, then connect to:
LHR to ZRH (depart 15:35) by British Airways.
Will 4 hours be enough time? The 2 flights will be separate ticket purchases. Does that mean I will have to go through arrivals, retrieve my checked bags, transfer to another terminal, check in my bags again, and go through security?
The reason I will have to connect is my overall trip will be to Switzerland first, then to the UK, then fly home to San Francisco (If I booked a one-way ticket from SFO-ZRH, then another one-way LHR-SFO back, the prices are astronomical). It's just a ton cheaper to do a roundtrip ticket SFO-LHR, and separate ticket LHR-ZRH.
Welcome to FT!
Search is always your friend for a question like this.
The Heathrow website is very useful
http://tinyurl.com/2gmveq.
Also if you search this forum using "Heathrow connection" you will find multiple threads, including this one from the other day
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/u-k-i...t3-t1-lhr.html
The MCT for T1 (UA flight arrival) > T5 (BA flight departure) is 90 mins.
Four hours should be plenty of time. UA and BA do interline bags. I suspect UA will interline your bags from SFO-ZRH on the outbound. But BA may not do so on the return as you're on separate PNRs. Be sure to leave plenty of time to connect on the return.