First time to Mexico and concerned about the layover at MEX
 

We're US citizens taking a Volaris flight from San Jose, Costa Rica to Guadalajara on Saturday (Easter weekend). We have a layover in Mexico City of 1 hour and 49 minutes. Both legs of the flight are through Volaris on one reservation.

We've never flown through Mexico City before. Is that enough time? We have checked bags - do we have to get those and recheck them or will Volaris transfer them for us? Any other advice? Also, I filled out the FMM online and the forms were emailed to me but I was never prompted to pay anything. We'll be in Mexico for 12 days so I thought we would have to pay. Is that something that'll take place at MEX?

Appreciate any thoughts. Thanks!

-- Jim

I dont know about the luggage situation but about the FMM card: since you are staying in Mexico more than 7 days the fee is included in the price you paid for the airline ticket so you do not pay anything on arrival.

Do not lose your portion of the form because you need to present it upon exiting the country; if you lose your portion you will have to pay a replacement fee of about US$30 at the airport.

That layover time is probably doable, if everything goes as planned. I assume you will have to get your bags as part of the customs/immigration process (as would be the case anywhere) and then drop them off at a counter somewhere. I would move as fast as you can to get to the immigration desk - sometimes you can breeze through in two minutes, sometimes it can take an hour. I find that's especially the case at T1, which is where Volaris flies into. If there's a long line threatening your connection time, ask one of the employees there for help. They have people supervising the line and telling clueless gringos to fill in the immigration form.

Also, what passport do you have? If you have a US passport, you should never have to pay an immigration fee upon arrival or departure because it's included in your ticket. I'm not sure what the rules are for those traveling on other passports, though.

Thanks for the replies on this. I ended up hitting up Volaris on Twitter to ask them about the baggage transfer and they told me that Volaris will handle the transfer since it's under one reservation... that was not correct at all.

When we checked in at SJO airport, we asked them at the counter and they said we'd have to get our bags and do the drop-off. If I had listened to Volaris on Twitter, we would have been up a creek without our bags when we got to GDL.

We were lucky that our flight got in a little early. We ended up with about 2 hours and 10 minutes' worth of time once we landed. That was barely enough.

Some notes for anyone reading this in the same boat we were.

1) The FMM we filled out online would have been fine except we hadn't printed it back-to-back on the pages. Apparently, that's a requirement and that's what one of the employees by the immigration line let us know. That meant we had to step off to the side and fill the forms out again. There was no line at immigration so we were lucky there. Also, there was no fee.

2) Even though we had to take time to fill out the forms again, it didn't matter time-wise. Once we got through immigration and over to baggage, the carousel hadn't started yet. In fact, it didn't start for probably another 20-30 minutes after we had arrived there.

3) We got our bags and took them through the long and slow security check. Then we dropped them off in a section just after the check.

4) We then rushed over to security for domestic flights. Since we already had dropped off our bags and had our boarding passes, there was no need to check in at the Volaris counter. The line for security took what seemed like forever but eventually, we got through that.

5) We basically ran from there to our gate (still in terminal 1). When we got there, they were already boarding. But we ran to the bathrooms for a last pee and then boarded the plane on time.

So, 2 hours, even landing and departing at the same terminal is really pushing it and something I didn't like. Good luck to anyone else trying to make that happen! :-)