AA to BA Connection at Heathrow
 

Can you please help me with my flight connection and what to expect when flying from JFK-LHR on AA and then four hours later from LHR-FCO? I believe the AA flight arrives into terminal 3 and the BA flight leaves from 1. A few questions:

Can we check our bags through to FCO all the way from JFK?

Once we arrive in LHR, how do we get to terminal 1? I would assume we have to clear customs.

I know the restrictions on carry on bags is tighter leaving LHR. What happens if our computer bags are slightly too large? I have a targus computer bag. Is that too big?

Is there a BA club in terminal 1 we can use? Showers?

Thanks for the help.

Mike

A bit more of a hassle than it sounds
 

The process of switching to your BA flight will be more unpleasant than you would expect reading that a bus is all you have to take. Here is the process:

After stepping off your incoming AA flight, follow the signs to Flight Transfers, a fair distance away.

Carefully watch the transfer signs, as the queue and process is different for passengers transferring into the same terminal than for passengers moving to a different terminal, as you will. You will eventually go down an escalator to a bus lobby where you wait for the transfer bus. Be sure you head to the appropriate door for your target terminal (1).

Cram onto the bus and be transported around the airport. Between the wait for the bus and the actual drive time, plan on 15-20 minutes of delay from when you reach the bus lobby.

At the new terminal bus lobby, head up the escalators where you will be routed to a security screening area. While you don't have to clear customs or deal with passport control stations, you will have to go through the metal detectors and run your carry-on items through x-ray systems. This is where it can be ugly -- at peak times the queue wraps around inside a large hall as much as for a top Disney amusement ride, then snakes outside and back up the hallways towards the bus lobby. It can burn up quite a bit of time as you inch along with many hundreds of other passengers.

Once you thread through the eye of the needle -- the few x-ray and metal detector stations -- you then are in a lobby with flight service desks for the airlines in this terminal. If you need to change boarding passes, attempt to hop on an earlier flight, or are not already in possession of a valid onward boarding pass, then you would queue up here for the BA counter. If you have thru boarding passes, just ignore these and continue to the escalators.

If you are flying in a premium cabin on BA, sometimes there is a fast track lane open in the large hall, permitting you to skip over a few hundred people for the x-ray and metal detector station. Sometimes it is closed, however, leaving premium passengers to queue with the masses. This special track generally does NOT accept AA status such as EXP as a substitute for a premium cabin boarding pass on BA, so if you are in economy on BA then plan on reading a good book while standing in the lines. When you are ticketed in business or first but the fast track lane is closed, read a good book while inching along.

Head up the escalators and watch for your terminal -- 1 -- to be sure you get to the correct floor.

If you are a PLT or EXP then head for the BA lounge, anyone can head there if flying in J, otherwise find a plastic seat somewhere. There is a fair collection of shops to wander through. The monitors will specify your assigned gate for the flight to FCO when close to departure, before then you just wait, either outside or in the BA lounge. Once the gate is assigned, you can plan for when to head down -- some gates are a bit of a walk away, others are closer and need less lead time.

The minimum connect times used for booking these AA to BA connections are very tight in most cases, with all the opportunities for waiting and delays, but most times you will make it unless your incoming flight is late arriving. If so, you will worry until you get through those metal detectors, at which point it is an easy lope to the boarding gates even if you have only 20 minutes or so left.

Have an enjoyable trip

That's my experience as well if it were interspersed with a feeling of dread and wanting to kill myself. It took 2 1/2 hours to go from 3 to 1 last January. Believe me, your 4 hours is probably just right from my experience. And that was before all the restrictions.

Thanks for the excellent posting and response to my questions. This should be FUN!

Mike

Yes, four hours is about right. I did this transfer a week ago Sunday morning, a time I thought should be relatively quiet. The queue for the bus to go from T3 to T1 went from a packed waiting room, up the stairs, and around the corner. Nice and stuffy in the waiting room, some people looked ready to pass out. That pleasant experience took almost an hour. Then to T1, where we had to wait in a queue of buses unloading. Then into another waiting area, where a guy was gating traffic up the escalator for crowd control. Up the escalator and line up to get into the FCC, with 3 lines merging into one. The allowable bag size has increased, so that's not much of an issue anymore. But they have agents looking to make sure there's only 1 bag/pax, and there's lots of amenity kit contents being tossed. Then into the madness they call the FCC. The FastTrack there is for BA J or F only. Fortunately, I was able to use this and therefore only spent 45 minutes in line. Finally got through all this to find that my connecting flight was closed, even though I arrived early and had 2.5 hrs to transfer. A nice agent was able to get me on the flight, but there were many, many others who were rebooking their missed connection.

Up until a few months ago, before the current LHR madness, common wisdom was that to go T3->T1 it was actually faster to go landside and reenter, NOT connect via FCC.

¿Would that advice still hold today?

Its bad either way and either way could be longer depending on the time of day.

LHR is not a place that you want be be now - a truely miserable experience.

Agreed; it's striving for a new low.

What about going the other way????
 

Greetings;

After reading the above.........realized we will be doing this the other way....IST-LHR on BA (Arr. 11:05am, Ter. #1) then AA-LHR-ORD-BOS in J (Lv. 2:15PM,) on 12/16/06........We are AA Plat. if that should help? How do we stand???? :confused:

Thanks.............

Basically the same drill; be sure to have BA check your bags through to the US. You ought to have enough time for a visit to the AC in T3.

AA status doesn't help during the transfer, the FastTrack at the FCC security is paid for by BA and available only if you hold a BA F or J boarding pass. But the lines are so long now that you have to fight through the crowd to get to the FastTrack line (which is quite fast, btw). I've done inter-terminal transits at LHR during September 06 in 40 minutes (at 6 am) and in 2 hours (later in the day). So the time and crowds really matter and change the time required drastically. I've heard of people taking 3 hours for the connection now (often landside is faster if you have FastTrack access, when the FCC gets this backed up; but again it is not predictable). The excessive crowding during peak times makes for an incredibly bad experience.

Since we will have Fasttrack access, do you think it'll be worth it to go through passport control, walk over to terminal 1 and go through security there? How far of a walk is it from the time you leave customs in terminal 3 to the entrance of terminal 1?

Thanks,

Mike

The walk is long, guessing 1/3 of a mile but there are moving sidewalks along much of it (and sometimes they are even operative!). So not for the faint of heart but also quite pleasant bit of exercise after a flight. The FCC is always good until 7 am, then it gets backed up. Presuming that you also have zone R check-in access at T1, then going landside is pretty good alternative; if you cannot use zone R, then it will take much longer to enter T1. I've decided to use FCC until 8am and landside zone R after that time; without zone R access I would stick to the FCC.

Can you explain what zone R is for me please?