LHR 1h15 connection, I-I
 

A friend has booked TLV-LHR-ORD on BA with a 1h15 international/international connection at LHR. BA says both LHR gates are in terminal 5.

Can someone with experience of this connection tell me a) his chance of making it and b) how BA has performed on rebooking missed connections of this sort? His destination is DAY (but a rebooking to CMH would be OK) after a 1h30 connection with a terminal change at ORD. Having gone through US immigration and the same terminal change there, I'm thinking that one is even dicier.

He will make the connection without any problem as long as the inbound flight is not more than about 30 minutes late.

And I would agree that ORD is a bigger issue. But that wasn't your question. The actual Minimum Connection Time is 1 hour, and so 1 hr 15 minutes is fine, if on one ticket I would take that quite happily knowing I'd probably make the connection easily and if not I'd be rebooked. It's not a difficult connection or particularly risky.

There is in the Dashboard an extremely detailed guide on T5 connections.. But in essence you need to clear security - not immigration - and then go to the gate. The one think to watch for is that ORD probably (but not definitely) will depart from T5B, and there is a good (but not excellent) chance that TLV will also go to T5B. In which case your friends needs to be careful not to follow everyone going off to the main building - there is a connection facility inside T5B that will be faster and less stressful, in terms of security. Note that s/he could make his/her life a lot easier by being scrupulous on the liquid restrictions, and present them and any electrical wiring separately on the security trays.

The important question is whether this will all be one ticket TLV-LHR-ORD-DAY or whether there's a separate ticket in there somewhere. Assuming all one ticket, 1:15 at LHR is doable although without a lot of room to dawdle. And if an inbound delay causes a misconnect BA will rebook to whatever the final destination on the ticket is. You're right that the 1:30 at ORD will be the bigger challenge. I would not plan either of these connection times if there's a separate ticket.

If on one ticket it depends on risk tolerance. If this is the only logical/viable BA itinerary given the various flight options available, I'd go ahead and give it a try. In the best case it works, and in the worst case of a misconnect and rebooking you'll be on the longer less convenient connection times you would have had anyway.

ETA: It looks like neither the lhr-ord nor the ord-day flights that produce these connection times are the last of the day. So I'd give it a shot on one ticket and figure there will be options for a later same-day arrival if something goes awry along the way.

I have a somewhat similar dilemma, traveling ORD-LHR-MXP in Club World. The only flight combination that gets me to Malpensa at the right time has a 1 hour connection at LHR.

Arrival from ORD and departure to MXP are both in Terminal 5, so the connection time is technically legal.

Presumably I will have to clear both immigration and security before I board to MXP. Is this doable?

Yes, very doable. Provided your inbound is on time, you'll have no issues. Even if you have ~15mins delay, you will still be fine. I wouldn't dawdle however ;)

You will have to clear security only. You will clear immigration in Milan.

It was all one ticket, and he even had time for a coffee in the lounge at ORD.

The requirement was to get to DAY, not ORD, so if he'd missed his booked connection at LHR, any routing to DAY would have worked. There were lots of possibilities, none of which were needed this time.

Thanks all for the advice.