Originally Posted by
cmd320
I had a flight with a 30 minute delay last week going into CLT. Upon arrival, we had to wait about 15-20 minutes for a bunch of departing aircraft pusing back to clear out of the alleyways since there is so little room between terminals at CLT. At that point, anyone with a transfer time of under 60-70 minutes was screwed.
Sounds exactly like my CLT connection last week. We sat forever trying to navigate our way to the high E gates. The FA mentioned that 15 people on board (on a CR9) were trying to make connections under 20 minutes, and to let them off first. I sort of chuckled because I knew what was coming. Yep, we stood there on the tarmac waiting for the ground crew to load ever single valet tagged bag onto the cart before pushing it over to be descended upon by the voracious crowd. By that time plenty of connections had been busted. I felt bad for all those people.
Tight connections in CLT can be awesome when they work. This has always been the case. I've had tons of 40 minute scheduled connections that still end up finding me with 20 minutes in the club. But when they don't work, they go really bad really fast.