Originally Posted by
cazzafly
I will be returning from a Kilimanjaro trek on 10 January 2014. I need to book a transfer flight from Kili to Nairobi inorder to get the 2340 hours BA flight back to London. There are 2 choices - one flight arriving at Nairobi at 1610 hours and one at 2040 hours. Do you think I will have enough time if we get the one arriving at 2040 hours. It sounds from the posts that we should be ok. ... I'm paranoid about missing the flight back to the UK.
I assume both JRO-NBO flights you are referring to are operated by Precision Air (PW). Are you talking about a single ticket/itinerary (in which case 3 hours is well above the minimum connection time, and so even the 20:40 arrival is fine) or two separate ticket/itineraries?
If the latter, and you are travelling without checked baggage, or PW will check your bags all the way through to London (it seems PW have an interline agreement with BA, but this doesn't necessarily guarantee they will agree to through check on a separate itinerary), and your PW flight isn't massively delayed, then 3 hours is more than enough time to transfer at NBO. However, if you have bags that can't be through checked, you would have to clear Immigration in NBO, collect your bags (allow 1hr, although hopefully it's less than that), then go over to the departures area (Unit 1 for BA, IIRC) and re-check in there. I assume BA advise to check-in ~2hrs in advance, and actually close check-in ~1hr in advance, and so 3 hours
should be sufficient. However, if the flight from JRO is significantly delayed, then it could get quite tight. Also, booking so many months in advance, you are at risk of any subsequent schedule changes by PW (which, on separate tickets, they would likely not be obliged to do anything about, even if the revised schedule was going to cause a misconnection to your BA flight).
If I was doing this, and could not afford to miss the BA flight, I would take the 16:10 arrival into NBO, and resign myself to a long wait... Others may feel the 20:40 arrival is fine.
Originally Posted by
cazzafly
Is asking about the loading of the bags at the gate reliable?
I am not sure what system BA use. However, for some other airlines at NBO, the information system at the gate does not have live updates from the baggage system. So, they can tell you which baggage is associated with your PNR - but they cannot tell you if it is actually on the plane...
Originally Posted by
cazzafly
Nairobi airport sounds a bit chaotic.
Not really, in my experience. But I guess I've flown through there a lot (and travel to far more chaotic locations as well) so perhaps I don't notice it... That said, it can be quite crowded, as I think it is now carrying far more passengers than its original design capacity.
And of course, welcome to FlyerTalk
cazzafly!