In April I did a 1 hour connection on Air China. Came up from Hong Kong, connecting to New York/JFK. So the HK flight arrived about 15 minutes early. Fantastic, right? Except.....we parked at a bus gate far away from the terminal. Damn, I am screwed! Got on the bus, got to the terminal. At the top of the escalator an Air China rep was waiting for us. He whisked us the front of the security line. It still took some time to get through but getting to the front of the line made all the difference. We made the connection, actually with some time to spare. HOWEVER - our bags did NOT make the connection. And no Air China rep was inside of the customs area to inform us. We waited for all of the bags to come off and did not see ours. So we went through customs and to the baggage office. The rep there was well aware, he had a list of the bags that missed. The delivered the bags the next day. I wish they would have informed us, at least by e-mail, so we did not have to waste 40 minutes waiting for bags that were never coming.

But yes, it is possible to make a tight connection. The key is getting an airline rep to get you to the front of the security line.