Is 40 min enough for connection

Just wondering if 40 minutes connection time is too short to connect in Ord for my flight to Delhi.I am thinking may be i need to stand by on a earlier flight which is 2 hours before. I am fling Dca-Ord and then Ord-Del. Also how the business class seats, food etc. Thanks for any help.

40 minutes is legal and doable, but not without risk. I'd go for stand by earlier and get a longer layover in ORD. If you miss the conenction - you'll wait a minimum of 24 hours to get out on the next AA non-stop, or could get lucky with a reroute via LHR on AA/BA.

As for J seats and service - check the unnofficial guide stickie for direct links to threads in international J service. It's been discussed and rhased here many times over.

It is a connection in the domestic terminal... not unlike connecting on any other flight... the downside is there are very nasty consequences if you miss the flight.

I have chanced the same thing through ORD onto London on the last flight of the day and made it. But that doesn't say I am either smart or sane.

I would definitely try to get onto an earlier flight--for the reasons already cited. The consequences of missing the ORD-DEL flight are pretty severe.

It is doable, and if I were flying to New York, I might take it.
However, with one flight a day to DEL, I wouldn't take the chance and wouldn't even have booked it. Also, if you have an upgrade to Business, then there is a great chance you won't be able to get it the following day.

I concur with the others... take the earlier flight and de-risk your plans. Even if you bought a ticket in Business, there's a chance that both First and Business will be sold out on the next day. Then you're into some re-route scenarios that you may not like at all.

I used to worry a lot about this kind of thing till I realized that all the extra hour or two layovers were adding up. I always take the shortest possible legal connection. Very rarely will I arrive late because of a missed connection (when it becomes tight the airline helps you out ... including putting you ahead in the security line if necessary).

Even if you only connect about once a month, a 2 hour average extra layover time is a full day sitting on your rear in an airport ... ugh!

I just made a connection a couple of days ago where I walked off of one plane and onto another ... before I would have been panicky ... now I realize that it was juuuust right and I felt really good about not having to sit around the airport at all.

Edit: in all fairness I should add that I have did have to overnight in ORD once on a connection from Shanghai to Buenos Aires (the nonstop plane took off on time but was a few hours late arriving??) ... this night in Chicago was a fair trade off for me to not have sat many hours in the airport playing it safe on other flights where I made the connection just fine.

While I respect your position, I found that the tension wasn't worth it. If you have commitments that make it important to stay on schedule, then I would much rather have an hour or two in the AC - where I can be pretty productive - and not have to worry about missing connections and losing upgrades.