FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Help with short connection time at LHR T5
Old Feb 14, 2022 | 3:42 pm
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Originally Posted by enzian
It is the possibility of late arrival of our flight from SEA that concerns me. ...

...

This is the reason for my concern. I would estimate that over our 12-year history of flying BA, our Seattle flight has arrived late enough times that I try hard to avoid tight connections. This time I deemed it the best choice due to all the schedule changes and cancellations (such as BA 582 not flying on Sundays, even though it was originally on the schedule).
Look, there's only so much you can do about a connection, however long you leave between flights. You could have left yourself 10 hours between flights and still have misconnected because your first flight took an overnight delay.

Given that this is the option that you picked, for understandable reasons (like many people pick connections of this length every day), the most effective thing that you can do is to learn in advance about the connection routes, the processes, and the physical locations of all the places that you need to be. This includes the alternatives, which may or may not come into play for you. You are already doing this by asking these questions, and you've already been given pointers to where the information is. So you're already many, many steps ahead of where you would have been if you had not even thought to ask.

On the day, if you find that time is short, then there are two more things: don't dawdle (made easier by the fact that you already know what your options are and where you are supposed to be going), and if necessary, be a bit proactive (eg asking ground staff whether they can help, if you see a long queue that might hold you up). But beyond that, if your connection time is eroded by things beyond your control, much will be down to luck on the day.

After all, if you travel regularly then one of the certainties of travel is that it will sometimes go wrong, perhaps horribly wrong. That's just one of those things. Many of us will say "Yup, sorry it's happened to you, but we've been there too."
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