ekartash

i am booked on flight 3 from JFK to LHR on april 10th. flight duration is over 8 hours. does anyone know why this is? i have flown to london before and i dont remember the actual flight being over 6 hours. i understand airport congestions. but 2 hours? what are the chances this flight lands way ahead of schedule?

i am also thinking of flying straight to rome to catch the roma/lazio match on the 11th. my flight is scheduled to get in at 8.15am. there is a british airways flight at 9.15am. the next flight doesnt depart until 12.20 (alitalia). i dont think i'll be able to catch the match, even if it starts at night. given the scheduled delta flight, can i connect in 1 hour? i am flying C and carrying on.

thanks

mersk862

Flights leave during peak JFK congestion hours, so a good chunk of that time will be dedicated to taxiing out of JFK. Take-off to touchdown should be somewhere in the 5h-5h45 range - I recently did ATL-LHR in 6h30 and that's a bit farther.

Also, part of it is based on slot times into LHR, and the very good possibility that you'll be circling around Southeastern England once you make it over there, waiting to land at Heathrow.

Though the flight could land ahead of schedule, especially since it lands on Saturday morning. On my flight, we landed at 10:42 a.m. and were parked at the gate at 10:45 a.m. The plane was due in at 12:15 p.m.

No change to catch the earlier BA flight though. Even though I don't think you'd need to clear customs since you'd be an international-international transfer, you'd need to deplane, take a bus to T5, get the BA boarding pass, clear security and go to the gate. 1 hour would be very tough to do.

zman

AA flights are listed 1 hr shorter in duration but they fly 777
which can go ~25mph faster. Does not explain the whole hour.

ClipperDelta

Flight time (from takeoff to touchdown) is usually around 6.5 hours but Delta usually blocks its JFK flights to account for taxi delays up to 1 hour. In this case, one also has to account for delays on the LHR end...arrivals into LHR around 7-9am usually face ATC delays and one ends up circling for 10-20 mins...

Of course, if the weather at JFK is great that day, and they're using 2 runways for takeoffs that evening, you may well takeoff from JFK with only a 20-30 minute delay....and if there are minimal ATC holds at LHR that day, yes, you could get in considerably early....YMMV...

Factotum

Sad but true... 90-minute taxi times at JFK during the evening "rush hour" for outbound international flights are not uncommon. Yes, there are times when everything goes right on both ends, and you get good winds enroute, and on those days you could arrive as much as an hour early. I've never had this happen on a London flight though - remember, LHR is the JFK of Europe. (Incidentally, maybe Delta needs to start padding the westbound flight schedules a little more - my last two TATL flights *into* JFK ran into 200+ MPH headwinds and, despite on-time departures, arrived an hour late!)

I wouldn't book a 1-hour connection, especially if you were thinking of doing a separate ticket. Even if the inbound flight is on schedule, how do you know what the security line is going to look like at LHR?

mersk862

Minimum connection I'd do at LHR is 2 hours. 90 minutes might be possible out of Terminal 4 only (since you're in the same terminal, and T4 is a lot quieter now that BA has moved everything but the BKK/SIN/SYD flights out of there) and there's no bus transportation involved. But going to Heathrow Central or T5, 2 hours minimum, and I'd strongly consider 3.

davetravels

It seems a tad odd that the 2 JFK/LHR flights for tomorrow, for example, are showing times of 7:20 & 7:40, but in April and later in the year, 7:55 & 8:05! Could be a million different factors built into the schedule.

As far as a 1 hour connection at LHR - and I'm one to cut it as CLOSE as possible - and the Europeans are UNBELIEVABLY strict about cut-off times for check-in and ticket change fees, I'd say . . . FUGEDDABOUDIT!!! (spoken with a heavy Brooklyn accent!)

mersk862

All about slot times at LHR. They vary throughout the year (and are based on days as well) so it makes scheduling into LHR a bit different throughout the weeks and the year.

c_d

I am on a JFK-TXL leg several times a year. There is usually a take-off delay but the winds as mentioned above are the biggest factor. I have had everything from 1 hour early to one hour late, depending just on the wind. There is definately a padding in that time, since I am usually at least 20 minutes early.