FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Why the "impossible" connections on AA?
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Old Jul 25, 2022 | 11:45 pm
  #54  
hbtr
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Originally Posted by Aliquot
Airline MCT's are actually well planned out. If you are a person of normal intelligence and normal mobility you shouldn't have a problem with a MCT connection provided you actually arrive in time. Allowing yourself more time for connections will of course lead to a lower chance of misconnections due to late arriving flights.
But that’s exactly the issue. The problem usually isn’t the aircraft landing late, more often it’s the 30 minute taxi tour of the airport, or the gate being unavailable, or no staff to operate the jetbridge, or some other operational failure. Granted it’s not easy for an airline to plan for such variables when they calculate MCT values but my perception is that they are considering only potential air delays (partly addressed by padding arrival schedules) while neglecting the significant (and I suspect increasing) occurrence of such ground delays. I religiously avoid connections that are less than 1 hour (which sometimes means I need to choose a 3 hour connection), and I have lost count of the number of times that based on the actual gate arrival time or aircraft deboarding time I would have clearly missed the earlier connection.
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