Minimum Connection Time (MCT) in Cancun (CUN)
 

Any recommendations for transit time in CUN? I have a (valid) option BOG-CUN-ORD on MX that has a 1 hour layover in Cancun. I understand that there is no airside transit, so I will need to clear customs and immigration and then re-clear security to access the gate. I am a bit concerned given this is the last flight to ORD for the day. Am I concerned over nothing?

It would seem impossible as check-in closes 60 min before departure, and you much claim bags at CUN and present them for custom inspection. Often this is a zoo (depends what other planes have arrived) and can take an hour by itself. But perhaps MX has some special arrangement for transit pax for this flight (meeting at airside and doing a transit); if MX says it meets MCT then it becomes their problem and expense if you misconnect (of course that is easier said than done).

Cancun immigration/customs on a Saturday
 

How long is it taking to get through immigatration and customs these days on a Saturday at 12:30?
I want to see if I will be able to make a connecting flight at Terminal 2 at 2:15 pm. Thank you

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

Is Cancun your first stop in Mexico? If so you will go through both immigration and customs.

If you are changing planes elsewhere in Mexico (i.e. Mexico City), you'd clear Mexican immigration at your first Mexican airport of entry. Then customs in Cancun. In this case you won't see your checked luggage, if any, until Cancun.

Mexican customs is a random affair - you are asked to push a button on a "traffic signal". Flashes green, you're good to go. Flashes red, your bags are inspected. And customs agents reserve the right to inspect any bag even if you get a green light.

For tourists the whole process is generally quick and painless. You shouldn't have any problem making your connection assuming your flight to Cancun is on time.

Baggage claim and customs share the same room. You might find it easiest to wait there for each other.

Good advice.

I fly Delta mostly to Cancun. In twenty plus trips we have needed from 20 minutes to 1h40 to get to an international gate. The priority lines can be long and slow moving. I always leave hotel 3 hours early if I can. The international departure area is very adequate and there is a business (priority pass member) lounge that anyone can use for I believe $25.

That said we fly out on the Saturday after Christmas or New Years. Saturdays have the biggest crowds and these are two of the busiest days. Mid-week or other times, I'd be tempted to leave 2.5 hours early for the airport (20 minute ride for me). Others wait until the last minute. I've seen some really panicked people begging to jump the waiting line.

I booked a SDT here landing in March on a Saturday afternoon leaving 1hr51min after landing . Flying in UA leaving UA. Can I stay air side? If not, is this enough time on a Saturday afternoon? I'll have no bags checked and also be in J/UA pp.

Thanks everyone in advance

Transferring intl to intl at CUN
 

Ok, I should have looked here first, but I was in a booking frenzy before United upped mileage requirements. Thus, I'm ticketed, on a Sunday:

UIO-PTY-CUN on CM arriving 12:28

CUN-PHL on US departing 14:10

From what I understand, not only are the two airlines in different terminal, I'll have to clear immigration, customs, AND security.

Do I stand any chance of pulling off a 102 minute connection like this? I'm in business class the whole way, but...

Maybe. Be prepared, know where you are going and this:

Do you speak Castilian / Spanish? Be politely assertive if things are getting tight and let the official folks know you are on a tight deadline, say a lot of "disculpe" (deess-COOL-pay" and edge into the front of the queues holding up your connecting BP, etc.

Key phrases

"Mi avión esta listo para salir" (my airplane is ready to leave) - "me ah-vee-OHN ess-TUH LEES-toe PAH-rah sol-EER"

"Con permiso" (please give me permission / forgive me) - "cone pear-ME-soh"

and of course, "disculpe" as above

Just these words with politeness but obvious intent and worry will cut you a ton of slack. Latinos can ignore queues and be pushy, but dissolve at some Latin politeness.

I spent most of 2013 traveling around Africa, I can get pushy when needed and things get out of hand, not worried about that. Just wanted to know how possible it looked...

That said, who knows if Copa will even be able to issue the US Airways boarding passes now that they're out of Star. Will be interesting to see....

Ah, well, you should have no problems.

Reporting back: COPA [b]cannot[/b[ issue US boarding passes now that they're out of Star. Ended up landing late into CUN with 1:20 to make my connection.

Ran to immigration, no line, pushed the button at customs, green light. Walked around 200m to the shuttle bus stop...bus only runs every 30 minutes on the 30 and hour. Problem. Bus arrived 5 minutes after I got there, and the driver was...persuaded to leave a little early :D Got to the US check-in counter with 61 minutes to go...and no trouble...but I got very lucky. I'd not recommend anyone try less than a 2 hour connection....everything just happened to sync up well for me.

It probably also has to do with the requirements for checking in going to the US, since interlining and APIS do not mix well. And if you're a non-US citizen, absolutely forget it.

It's actually an easy, straightforward walk of under 10mins between terminals, but it's not signposted. Just follow the many employees who do it...

Is it possible to make a connection within Terminal 3 without going through passport control?

No, because MX airports work like US ones... there is no outbound passport control. Everyone in the terminal is technically still in MX.

Beware the minimum connection time in Cancun
 

We recently travelled on an Aeroplan reward ticket from Ottawa to Quito, Ecuador. Our initial flight out of Ottawa connected through Cancun, Mexico, with a 90 minute connection. I foolishly believed that Aeroplan would know the appropriate minimum connection time through Cancun airport. It turns out they do not. On arrival in Cancun, you deplane onto a bus, then to the terminal to clear immigration, pick up luggage (although it had been tagged all the way through and the Air Canada agent told us we would not need to pick it up in Cancun), and through customs where you may be randomly selected for baggage inspection (we were). Then we had to leave Cancun Terminal 3 via an airport shuttle, taking us to Terminal 2 to to check in with Copa Airlines, for our onward travel. Needless to say, the gate was closed by the time we made it there. Luckily for us, our inbound flight out of Ottawa was late arriving (likely due to de-icing before departure), so after a minimum of argument the Air Canada folks at Cancun airport agreed that it was their problem to resolve, and they worked with Aeroplan to get us re-booked to the following day. On further prompting, they also picked up our accommodations and meals for the day. Just know if you are coming into Cancun on Air Canada and connecting to a central or south american airline, the minimum connection time should be no less than 3 hours, in my opinion.

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.

​​​​​​​

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).

Missed flight in Cancun Jan 1/19
 

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?

If you don't have checked bags I suspect it would be fine. I was there last week and they have a new e-gate system for US/Canadian passports with a smaller line (families not allowed, which speeds it up too). I went from the plane to outside in under 15 minutes. Don't know about the folks who checked bags...

I flew AC to Cancun back in March. The immigration experience was the same as you mentioned. The checked bags were another matter altogether. There were no free gates when we arrived so we parked at another terminal and were bused back. As a result the bags took close to 45 mins to an hour to be delivered. This bad performance is not restricted to AC, on a UA flight the previous year it took almost 2 hours to get our checked bags in the same terminal. The security in Cancun is also a gong show. Since it is a tourist destination, the whole process is very inefficient. It can take 30 minutes to clear security.
With no bags, 90 minutes to 2 hours is possible but tight, with bags, forget it.

Thanks. I m going to connect to AC, arriving on Copa, so arriving in the other terminal. It seems like the airport setting 90 mins MCT and AC selling such MCT is just insane. There are two options 1:48 and 2:27 connecting Copa to AC. I ll go with the latter, and hopefully things will work out, this is on the way home, so if the bag gets lost, so be it.

Last I went in the summer, United bags were already out after immigration in less than 15 minutes, but that was midweek.

I realize I'm responding to the original message rather than the recent ones, sorry.

This could happen anywhere. I've been pulled aside for a secondary at USCBP at YYZ and missed my connection despite an ample connection time.

I should hope it didn't require any argument to be rebooked! That shouldn't take any convincing and should be the case regardless of the cause of the misconnect.I think you were fortunate to get the accomodations and meals taken care of though. That might have been due to the delay.

went to Cancun last month.with AC.
Immigration was easy with the automated entry for North Americans.
Luggage took an hour however.

Any updates here on international to domestic connection in CUN Cancun — arriving on DL from JFK at 1230, is a 50 minute connection to domestic flight on Aeromexico at 1320 feasible? No checked baggage, UK passport

Have never been so can't give direct experience. This website should be of help: Connecting Flights Information | Cancun Airport

How critical is it that you make that outgoing domestic flight? The webpage indicates it is up to 30 minutes between shuttle buses and it takes up to 20 minutes to go between terminals. Based on that alone, 50 minutes to clear immigration and customs and get to a different gate/ terminal seems to be cutting it way too tight. Not to mention, what if your incoming flight is delayed? Even though CUN seems to be a relatively small airport, I would still allow 2.5-3 hours connection time unless the connection is not at all critical.