Originally Posted by
QueenOfCoach
Finally, what is your tolerance for the "next available flight" should you miss your booked flight? Remember they start upgrading folks from the wait list a couple of days ahead. That next available flight may or may not have your premium cabin seat available. Are you willing to wait a day or two in Los Angeles?
This is the key that people ignore when making blanket statements that short connections like this are crazy or only for gamblers. If the flight is on time, OP will make the connection. Even if the flight is delayed a bit, OP might well make the connection. Systemwide, AA is on time about 80% of the time (largely because the scheduled flight times include padding, which is why the flight often arrives 20 minutes early, as the OP says). So you're probably talking no more than a 20% probability of missing the connection. The question is whether the OP is willing to tolerate that risk for this particular trip; they haven't given any indication of what the backup options are or how catastrophic missing the international flight would be, but they apparently are OK with the risk because they booked the flight.
The 8:50 AM arrival from SJC is the first flight of the day, so the real question is which is worse for the OP: a 100% chance of having to leave SJC the previous night (assuming the 9:50 AM flight to their destination is the only one, something we can't assess with the information provided) or a 20% chance (probably a high guesstimate) of missing the international flights? For many but not all of my trips, the 100% chance of leaving SJC the night before would be worse.
Note that this morning's 8:50 AM scheduled arrival from SJC actually arrived at the gate at 8:15 AM (after landing at 8:05 AM); the
latest it has landed in the last week is 8:30 AM. So this is not a connection I would sweat at all; it looks to me like my 20% guesstimate of the probability of missing the connection is very high.