<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by hindukid:
Trying to help some family members get to LAX from MHT? MHT flight gets in at 6:57. LAX flight leaves at 7:00PM. On a hunch I checked other cities and saw that SAN,LAX,SFO,SEA,LAS,PDX,SLC,DFW all leave between 6:50 and 7:20 pm. Why plan a flight that misses a lot of major connections by 30 minutes. It seems to me that this MHT flight would be a lot better if 45 minutes earlier.</font>
The reason for this is that the 4:10 PM flight to ATL comes from ATL and arrives MHT at 3:12 PM. You can't leave much earlier than 4:10 PM. You could make it a 30 minute turn and just barely make the ATL connections, but with the slightest delay, the ATL connections bust, so Delta goes with the conservative approach. There is a later bank of flights out of ATL (e.g., 9:00 PM to LAX), so connections are possible, just not really short layovers.
You could also leave MHT later, at 5:35 PM to CVG (mainline!) and connect there. Layover time in CVG is the typical one hour.