Originally Posted by
impeymac
The transfer at Chicago is domestic --> International. In my (admittedly limited) experience this is the easy part of a transfer within the USA; in theory just deplane & make your way to the departure gate - no security & no immigration to deal with, unlike doing it the other way round. This also assumes your luggage is checked through of course.
55 mins doesn't seem much but if everything's on time it should work. If you're late arriving into ORD, or maybe depending on which terminals are involved, that might be the start of a bigger problem, though it'll be up to the airline to get you a seat on the next available flight without charge.
my concern is about time wasted if i am stuck in ord - if i want the earlier 4pm aa flight, it's adding $560 to the cost - that may be what i need to do. issues such as this aside, being based out of PIT, qr joining ow has been great for me - if the connection times are agreeable, i am getting good through fares with the domestic segments on aa in f etc. earlier i had to get two rt tickets - one domestic and one international and hope the domestic flight was on time. the frequency between pit and ord is really good compared to pit - jfk