Connection time LHR
I'm sure this horse has been beaten to death, but I wanted to share my experience connecting from Turkish Airlines to UA at Heathrow this past weekend.
Tickets were booked on UA, which means I didn't get seat assignments with Turkish. So a few days before the flight I called Turkish to see if they could assign me a seat near the front, since the connection time was only 70 minutes and Heathrow is such a pain.
Turkish agent on the phone refused to assign a seat because he said the ticket needed to be reissued. Uh? He said that was an illegal connection as far as Turkish is concerned, because they require 90 minutes for Heathrow. So I called UA back, 1k agent tells me Turkish is full of you-know-what, the connection is legal, 60 minutes is fine and I have 70. Will not change flights without charging the change fee. So I decide to roll the dice.
At check-in in Istanbul I learned that since my seat was not pre-assigned, I am all the way in the back. Lovely.
The flight from Istanbul took off and landed on time. I mean, REALLY on time, almost down to the minute. As soon as the seatbelt sign is off I tried to push my way up the aisle, and you can imagine how that went. About 5 minutes to deplane and I took off running. I could see the United plane just a few gates to my right, figured it was fine. No, sir. Security is on the other end of T2. Only one X-Ray working, about 40 people in line. Finally got through, ran all the way back, only to be told I had to first go to the transfer desk. At that point I can hear the announcement for "last call" and "all passengers need to be on board at this point".
Not entirely relevant, but I have a ruptured spinal disc on my lower back, so after the sprint through the terminal I am limping badly and barely able to walk. No carts in sight.
The door closed right behind me.
Lesson here - even though I made my flight, this connection should never be legal. I had no carry-on, no stroller, no elderly companion or toddlers in tow. I can only imagine what would happen to others in these situations. The line at security was not that long. My flight from Istanbul was on time. Any of those variables could be off by 10 minutes and I'd be spending the night in London.