seabrookflyer

Recently took CO 63 from Madrid to IAH. Flight is marketed as 1-stop service via Newark with "equipment change." I thought this might give you some assurance that if the transatlantic flight was delayed, the continuation of the flight from EWR-IAH would wait. NOT! There is only about an hour built in to the schedule in Newark, barely enough time to get through customs under the best of conditions. In my case, the flight was 40 minutes late arriving from Madrid. The guy directing traffic out of customs wouldn't even allow us to try to recheck bags and connect. After spending over an hour in the rebooking line (with 2 business first clerks reading magazines, and no elite line), I got to standby on 4 different flights before getting home to Houston. I asked an agent in the PC about whether this was just pretending to be a direct flight and they said that "occassionally someone runs and makes the connection."

Questions for the team:
1. Was my experience really typical--should I avoid 1-stop flights and insist that my travel agent book two separate flight numbers with more time for transit in Newark?
2. If the flight had been delayed another half an hour, with the EWR-IAH plane departing on time, there would have been two CO 63 planes in the air around Newark. Isn't this an air traffic safety issue?