OP, sorry to hear about your ...... experience and, in general, you comment that 90 minutes is insufficient for a connection in CUN is probably correct, but few comments...
Originally Posted by
chantl01
I foolishly believed that Aeroplan would know the appropriate minimum connection time through Cancun airport. It turns out they do not.
As Bohemian1 pointed out, that is in fact the MCT. Whether MCTs are practical or realistic is another matter.
On arrival in Cancun, you deplane onto a bus
Not necessarily. I was there last week, as were a number of people I know, on various AC flights. All arrived and departed via jetbridge. Bad luck for you, unfortunately.
where you may be randomly selected for baggage inspection (we were).
More bad luck.
Luckily for us, our inbound flight out of Ottawa was late arriving (likely due to de-icing before departure)
Even more bad luck.
so after a minimum of argument the Air Canada folks at Cancun airport agreed that it was their problem to resolve, and they worked with Aeroplan to get us re-booked to the following day. On further prompting, they also picked up our accommodations and meals for the day.
Glad to hear AC took care of you, but you had a legal connection and did your utmost to make it, so either AC or CM should have been taking care of it.
Just know if you are coming into Cancun on Air Canada and connecting to a central or south american airline, the minimum connection time should be no less than 3 hours, in my opinion.
Your conclusion may well be correct, especially for someone with checked baggage, but keep in mind that you had a lot of bad luck on this trip - late departure/arrival, bus gate, baggage search... Without one or more of these unusual items, you might well have made your connection.
So 90 minutes is achievable, and maybe even a majority of the time someone with a 90-minute connection would make it.
But with the kind of bad luck you had, it's easily possible to miss perfectly legal connections in many airports. A small delay in your flight arrival or hiccup at CBSA could throw off your ability to make a legal 60-minute TB connection at YYZ, for example (especially in the pre-OSS days).