Impossible flight connection - Montreal
 

BA sold me a through ticket from Heathrow to St. Johns via Montreal. As the domestic connection is with Air Canada, BA did not issue a boarding card for this leg or check my luggage through. The connection time in Montreal was 1 hour. Typical immigration queues at Montreal are 30 minutes and the domestic flight closes 30 minutes before departure. So even if you are Carl Lewis, have hand luggage only and have a diplomatic passport I doubt it is possible to make these connections. I think the 1 hour minimum connection time at Montreal is for airlines within the same alliance where your bags are checked through and boarding card given for both flights at original departure point. Give yourself more time if you are changing from one airline alliance to another especially for international to domestic transfers where you have to go through immigration and customs. Don't trust BA to consider this. They want your money. If you miss your connection, BA will pay for a hotel and rebook your onward journey but otherwise will offer no compensation as they pass all responsibility to IATA who they say set minimum connecting times. You can't sue IATA as you don't have a contract with them. If anyone has had a similar experience with BA with missed connections at Montreal, please let me know. That way I hope to be able to prove that BA were negligent in that they were aware of the problem and did nothing about it. Many thanks.

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I´m afraid even if you found a few dozen people who missed their connecting flight who were in a similar situation, you wouldn´t get any compensation from BA.

Btw, even if you had connected AC-AC, you still would have had to collect your luggage, go through customs and drop off your bags again.

I´d only consider a 60min connection at any Canadian airport (arriving from Europe) if I had hand baggage only, had Elite status with the airline and there was another flight to my destination that day. Otherwise this is a recipe for desaster.

Since you started your post in the past tense, is this a trip you've already taken? If so, did you end up missing your connection?

From what I've been able to find, the minimum connecting time at YUL from an international flight to a Canadian flight is, in fact, 60 minutes. Just because you may miss your 2nd flight, that really doesn't prove any negligence by BA.

Did you buy this ticket without checking the connecting time? Since you seem to be familiar with the wait times in YUL, why didn't you choose another itinerary with a bit longer connection? You certainly aren't required to accept what BA offers. There are many times I've not chosen flights with the minimum connecting time since I didn't feel comfortable with them.

Also, just because 2 airlines are not in the same alliance doesn't mean they don't have an interline baggage agreement. I'd would guess 2 major carriers such as AC & BA do interline.

Correct. Every airport has published 'legal' connection times and the CRS will not allow an itinerary in violation of the minimum.

Nothing to do with BA. It's true that some of these times are optimistic (at best) and don't seem to be updated to keep pace with reality. Suggest you complain to ICAO; they are the ones responsible or not as the case may be.