And the passport lines and security are quick? I'm just worried if we are delayed. Do you think there is any chance at all they would hold the connecting Lufthansa flight if we are like 20 min late arriving?

If you are 20 minutes late - you will still make the connection - but no drink in lounge.

It is relatively quiet at that time of the day both in terms of passports and security, too. That said, in the unfortunate circumstances that your ORD flight is going to be heavily delayed, chances that LH will delay its departure are next-to-nil, I'm afraid (if that's going to be the case, touch wood not, you would head straight to the transfer desk behind gate 26 and next to the ING internet point where they would do the necessary in order to find you a seat on the next available flight). Had you been connecting to a LOT flight, it would have been a completely different scenario - I personally experienced several cases when, especially in company of a number of other connecting passengers, the plane was purposely delayed in order to allow such passengers to make their connections, the last time, funnily enough, a few days ago on my way to BEG, smiley faces at the gate and one of the ladies telling me to hurry up. With the LH service having a good >50% of passengers connecting in FRA, I strongly doubt they would wait to arm doors and cross-check, unless there were a good number of people coming from the delayed ORD flight.

G

Ok. I do see there is a later flight heading to FRA that would let me catch my connection to JNB in time in FRA. So hopefully that flight isnt fully booked up in the event we miss our connection. And not too worried about missing a drink in the lounge if time is tight - I am sure I will already have had numerous drinks on the flight across the pond :P. Thanks for the help!

Oh, I just looked at flightstats.com for my inbound flight (LO 4) and it says it only has an on-time rate of 36% with the average delay being 39minutes! Should I be worried based on this?

Knowing Warsaw airport like the back of my hand, I can tell you that even a ~40-minute delay of the 004 from O'Hare would still allow you to cut it fine and therefore make it to your next gate. I'm at the airport as we speak awaiting the (delayed) afternoon service to Belgrade and, up to a couple of minutes ago, the 1349 to Frankfurt-am-Main was still showing final call at gate 30 (note that 1348 landed perfectly on-time).

G

ok thank you so much, this has alleviated some of my worries :)

There is no point in worrying about things you cannot change/influence. If you miss your FRA flight you'll be put on the next one.

50 minute connection enough at Warsaw?
 

I just booked a super last minute flight on LOT from Odessa --> Warsaw --> LAX but the connection time in Warsaw is only 50 minutes. The entire booking is on one ticket. Is this flight doable? I'm a bit stressed as I need to be back in Los Angeles but this connection seems rather undoable.

It is doable if your flight will be on time, or delayed no more than 30 min.

Doable - you only need to clear security. No passport control.

I'm confused by all of these glowing reviews of LO. The food was meh, connecting in WAW is a disorganized NIGHTMARE (non-Schengen to Schengen), and the FAs are also meh.

My route was OTP > WAW > FRA (all in C)

Out of interest, why? Connections at Okęcie are normally plain sailing (in fact, I'd personally rank WAW amongst the most connection-friendly airports in Europe together with CPH & MUC) hence I'm genuinely curious to hear what happened there.

G

I thought I did explain it, or...? I arrived from Bucharest (non-Schengen) and needed to transfer to the Schengen area. So I was in the Passport control with what had to be 2 planes full from China. There was no expedited anything or special ground services for C/J passengers. I was under the impression that I would receive a ground transfer as an arriving C/J passenger, but nope. Technically, I even had a flight in F that day (FRA to BOS on LH in F), but nevermind.

There were no concrete lines and everyone just stood where they wanted and nothing moved. I almost missed my connection and it was not even that short.
Nobody at all spoke English there which, quite honestly, was a surprise. It's the first EU airport I've ever been where people in an official capacity couldn't speak it. And then on-board experience: the FAs sucked, the food was mediocre. I'm just not a fan.

I've flown Tarom and it was a much better experience, so I assumed that the Eastern European standard of service would be higher.

No you didn't -

Disorganized nightmare can mean all and nothing, but you've made your point now, which is what I was asking in the first instance.

G