To be fair, Expertflyer also shows a 90 minute MCT for international to international connections at CUN.

Based on your experience, that is very optimistic, but then so are other published MCTs. But I wouldn't call it Aeroplan's fault - they just use what has been published.

But thanks for the heads up.

It's Cancun, not Zurich.

Depending on your arrival time, Cancun in peak season can be a gong show for arrivals (as you experienced).

There are so many FOTSG travellers from around the world that the lines can be very slow at immigration and then customs, and AV/CM use T2 and AC moved to T3 sometime ago...so a recipe for trouble.

Glad the CUN AC staff stepped up. Their station manager is quite good.

In defense of Aeroplan here, issue is really not about Aeroplan respecting the MCT, which they did, but about how realistic the MCT is.

​OP, sorry to hear about your ...... experience and, in general, you comment that 90 minutes is insufficient for a connection in CUN is probably correct, but few comments...

As Bohemian1 pointed out, that is in fact the MCT. Whether MCTs are practical or realistic is another matter.

Not necessarily. I was there last week, as were a number of people I know, on various AC flights. All arrived and departed via jetbridge. Bad luck for you, unfortunately.

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More bad luck.

Even more bad luck.

Glad to hear AC took care of you, but you had a legal connection and did your utmost to make it, so either AC or CM should have been taking care of it.

​​​​​​Your conclusion may well be correct, especially for someone with checked baggage, but keep in mind that you had a lot of bad luck on this trip - late departure/arrival, bus gate, baggage search... Without one or more of these unusual items, you might well have made your connection.

So 90 minutes is achievable, and maybe even a majority of the time someone with a 90-minute connection would make it.

But with the kind of bad luck you had, it's easily possible to miss perfectly legal connections in many airports. A small delay in your flight arrival or hiccup at CBSA could throw off your ability to make a legal 60-minute TB connection at YYZ, for example (especially in the pre-OSS days).

Travelling on a Aeroplan ticket from Buenos Aries to Calgary we too missed our flight in Cancun on Jan 1/19 due to the minimum connection time (90 minutes) not being enough time. In Buenos Aries we were told by Copa Airlines that our luggage would go straight through to Calgary but it was offloaded in Cancun instead. Copa arrived on time but it took over an hour to go through immigration and wait for our luggage leaving us less than half an hour to go through customs and get to another terminal where Air Canada was. We were treated very badly at the Air Canada desk with them telling us it was Aeroplans fault and we would have to purchase another ticket on their plane to get back to Calgary which left in two days. Westjet had a flight out later that night so we had to purchase a ticket from them at a extra cost of $1300 in order to get home. Consider yourself lucky that Air Canada looked after you because we did not have that experience. It was New Years day with very little open, foreign language problems, credit card machines not working and almost no internet. We met another passenger from Argentina who also missed the AC flight for the same reason and Copa almost immediately refunded his WestJet ticket but Air Canada refuses to refund ours. I agree with you that you need at least 3 hours to transit through Cancun airport and I would not go back to that airport with less time than that.

Airports like CUN are not designed for transit pax. And it is an outstation for everyone involved (AC, CM). Two huge red flags.

I am sure you were going however Aeroplan gave you availability, but I wouldn't transit through there under any circumstances, let alone with a 90 min connection time and luggage.

Anyone with a recent experience at CUN? How does it look now in terms of immigration exit lines/check in etc?
Considering flying elsewhere in Mexico using CUN as a connection (cheap), would like to know what the conditions are.

Related, but not AC related...it seems like this is probably a bad idea?

YVR-YYC-CUN on WS arriving at 1558
CUN-PTY-MDE on CM departing at 1754

I would more than likely be travelling carry on only, the CUN airport mentions that this would be outside peak times, it would be mid week, a Thursday and in August while COVID is still going on. For another $33 there's another CUN-PTY on Copa, but it's only 20 minutes later.

Any thoughts?

Quick question. I've had a million schedule changes on my flight to Nicaragua here in a little over a month and I just got rebooked DEN-CUN-PTY-MGA. I have a ~3 hour connection in Cancun, and I know I have to a) clear immigration and b) switch terminals. This is at least not on a weekend. Any reason for concern? I'm currently trying to change my flights to DEN-IAH-PTY-MGA, with little success.

Just giving this a bump since this thread seems to have gotten some activity. I went to, gasp, TripAdvisor and asked, but since they're a different kind of traveler over there, I'd rather get an FT opinion. The layover is now 3:26 also, giving some more flexibility.

Not sure what terminal you'll be flying into, but I can talk about T3 at CUN... Also, not sure if you've been at CUN before. And, not sure if you would have to collect your luggage & take it w/ you to your other terminal (I assume so ??). And, not sure if you have to re-check in at your 2nd terminal ??

Sometimes when you enter the Immigration hall at T3, the multiple lines are all backed up almost to the escalators where you come down. That's what happened July 30th when we arrived. They had Immigration officers at almost all of the booths, so the wait wasn't too bad. I think it took under 30 minutes to progress to a booth.

By the time you get through lines like that your luggage will have been pulled off of the conveyor & will be lined up on the floor near the belt it came off of. Even if you get through Immigration quickly, the luggage always comes out pretty quickly for us, so that shouldn't take much extra time.

Then, you'll walk through the Customs area. Nowadays you just walk through at T3 (no more luggage scanner) (no more red/green light to press) (& they rarely stop anyone for a luggage search, that we've seen).

Then, you go outside & get yourself to your next terminal. We've never done that so I don't know those details, but I know there are inter-airport buses that you catch (that are free, I believe).

Anyway, personally I think that 3 hours sounds like enough time for you to do what you need to. Hopefully someone else that's switched terminals will reply here !!

Thanks for responding. I'm transferring from T3 (United) to T2 (Copa). I Google Mapped it and it's only an 8 minute walk, so if we don't feel like waiting for the shuttle, it won't be too bad. Also, thankfully both of us will just have carry-on, so there won't be a need to re-check. I was just worried that:

Immigration + ~10 Minutes to Switch Terminals + Re-Checking In with Copa (if only to turn in our forms) would eat up a lot of that layover. I've read some of the horror stories of 2-hour waits in the immigration line. But, it sounds like immigration isn't too bad right now, and I have a hunch that the Copa check-in line won't be nearly as bad as any of the U.S.-based airlines. There are two flights leaving to Panama City right around the same time, but I did look at the seat maps (not a good indicator of load, I know), and both are only about 25% full at most right now.

Oh gosh, I saw you now have an even longer layover. And, you're doing carry-on only. You should have a ton of time to get to T2, eat lunch, shop & repeat all that !!

The last few trips they've been much better at staffing the Immigration booths, so they've made it faster than it used to be (for us, at least). We're there pretty much every April & Dec, sometimes August too.

I think in all of our many arrivals into T3 we've probably never waited longer than 45 minutes in the Immigration line. And, those longer waits would likely have been for our Xmas-time trips where there are more travelers around.

Oh, and I've read stories to make sure you get the official terminal shuttle bus. People have been scammed by non-official shuttle people who charge you an arm & a leg for the short transfer.

Good to hear. Honestly, I think we'll probably just walk. I read that the shuttles run every fifteen minutes. So on average, I'll be waiting eight minutes which is the same amount of time it'll take us to walk there. Having come off of a four hour flight from Denver, it'll probably be welcome. If immigration takes a long time and the shuttle just happens to be sitting there, maybe.

Has anyone done this recently. Aeroplan is selling a 1:48 and 2:27 connection CM->AC.

Would the latter one be doable?