Originally Posted by
buildingcredit
For those of you out of SMF with experience on repositioning flights, how much room (time) do you usually give yourself to reposition at LAX? I'm trying to book for family for SMF-LAX with a LAX-EU flight at 1:30pm. Do you think 3hrs is enough to connect (arriving at LAX at 10:30AM)? It would be DL at T3 so not too far to TBIT. What about a WN flight into LAX at T1? Or would you rather do the first flight of the morning arriving at LAX at 7:45AM? Thanks in advance.
Since no one has shared their experiences, let me share my thoughts.
LAX is my home airport; I have never connected or repositioned here.
This appears to be a trip on separate tickets or PNRs. I assume that for a family trip to Europe, you will be checking bags. Keep in mind that at LAX, it often takes as long as half an hour for checked bags to show up on the luggage carousels.
Once you have your bags, it will take you 5-10 minutes to get from T3 (DL) or 15-20 minutes to get from T1 (WN) to the check-in counters at TBIT. While you did not identify the airline that you are flying to Europe, just about every airline has a 60 minutes cutoff for checking bags for international flights.
You didn't write whether you and your family have TSA PreCheck. Figure on 5-15 to clear security with PreCheck and up to 20-30 minutes without; however, that can be done in the time between checking your bags for the international flight and the start of boarding time, generally 30-40 minutes prior to departure time.
Should your flight depart from the West Gates concourse (200's) add 15-20 minutes to get there. That cuts your self-transfer time to approximately a hour or less. You will have no margin for error in case that your flight from Sacramento is delayed. I would not feel comfortable with only three hours for a self-transfer to an international flight at LAX.