Connection time at AMS, with interlining from QR to BA?
 

I posted in the Newbie thread that I have booked my family of 4 onto a great deal with QR in J from AMS-DOH-DPS and back next Easter.

We are going to take the advice provided and take a positioning flight from LON to AMS the night before and probably stay in the IBIS Styles before heading to the airport around midday to check in for the 15:35 flight.

Its the flight back to LON from AMS that I am puzzling about.

We are due to land back in AMS from DOH at 13:45 and I am eyeing up a BA flight from AMS to LCY at 16:20 on the assumption that I can get our baggage interlined all the way back to LCY when checking in at DPS.

Is 2hr 35min enough time to get across AMS if our bags are interlined? The info online and on this forum suggest interlining will be fine and that minimum transfer time is 50 mins, so this option will be fine even with up to 90 mins delay on the flight from DOH.

Or am I missing something. We've not done the whole re-positioning flights approach before but the cost of the J tickets from AMS to DPS made it hard to pass up.

That is plenty of time if everything is on schedule.

Add a delay though and having bags tagged through to a flight you miss creates problems, even though in theory you could change your BA flights on the day for free if you have Plus fares and there is space available.

If I were you I would check the on time performance of the inbound and then decide how much of a gamble it is and whether you want a longer cushion or not.

If your bags are tagged through I'd say that the slowest person with the longest walk between gates at Schiphol wouldn't need longer than half an hour, their luggage might.

Are you sure that bags will be checked through on separate tickets? Not many airlines are still willing to do this.

Unless you're willing to buy new AMS-LON tickets at the airport, this doesn't seem like a good idea, although it's very likely to be fine if there are no delays the day you're traveling.

BTW, do you really care which London airport you use? Remember that if you're driving to the airport, you'll want to come and go from the same one. Otherwise, it's a matter of convenient/cheap transportation at the times you need.

It is a stated benefit Qatar Airways offers.

OP, I would say that connection time is about right. Check the main thread on interlining on separate tickets and print out the relevant page from the QR website.

The incoming flight from DOH so far over the last 10 or so days that I can see has been arriving no later than 15 minutes behind schedule and that hasn't been common. They appear to arrive at the D gates and the BA flight seems to depart D gates which looks like a 15 min walk plus one set of security.

As you say I might be able to change my BA flight whilst either at DOH or in the air although won't my bags be tagged incorrectly at that point?

All the info on QR website suggests they will interline the bags.

I don't care which LON airport I use but I need to choose a flight at some stage to get home. I am flying out of LGW to AMS but will get a taxi to the airport.

I don't want a massive connection time in AMS on the way home as we will have been travelling for almost 24hrs at that stage, having left DPS at 00:35. I am travelling with two young children (who will be 8 and 6 then) who have school the next day so it would be nice to get home by a reasonable time. We live in Kent so LHR and LTN are our least favourite LON options but that doesn't mean we won't use them - the travel time, especially at rush hour, can just be quite long.

Thank you, it did feel about right. I know I can give myself 5+ hours if I needed to but that seems excessive. To me the plane will either arrive relatively on time (within a 60 min window) or it will all go horribly wrong and the delay will be much greater.

A side question - if we missed the connection in DOH to AMS due to the DPS - DOH leg being delayed/cancelled do you think I could convince QR to fly us back to LON as part of the re-route as their is only one flight per day to AMS? Or will they insist AMS is the destination by hook or by crook?

I believe your reasoning is good and 2h35 is plenty of time. Sure the flight could be five hours late but 2h35 accounts for a normal delay. And you won't have to clear immigration again.

There are plenty of flights to LHR during the day (you are expected to depart DOH at 7:50), so QR should have no problem (and be willing) accommodating to London.

This is absolutely a wrong assumption. QR will not give a damn and will only rebook you to an AMS-bound flight, like it or not. Yes, I'm speaking from experience. In 99% of cases any airline will operate like this, by the way.

In the case of IRROPS I think it used to be the case that you could ask for anywhere within 500miles. There's a thread here somewhere.

I may be wrong, and someone over at the BA forum could probably confirm, but I think that once you are checked in for the BA flight (which you would be from DPS if your bags are tagged through), BA would have to offload you before you could then change to a later flight (so perhaps not so easy to arrange mid-flight DOH-AMS). It's simple if you are already planning to go landside at AMS and check in separately for the BA flight, less easy if your bags are checked through and missed the flight that they were already tagged for. It may not be easy/possible to have them retagged at AMS without collecting them and going landside to check in again for the later flight. And retrieving mis-tagged bags may take a while, particularly at AMS...

That said, I would go for it, there should be plenty of time but there is, of course, always a risk. That risk is the potential price of using separate tickets to achieve a cheaper itinerary.

When did you experience this with QR? mr_botak says there has been a thread on it, but I suspect there have been several, where an alternate airport within a certain radius has come into play. If this has changed it has not been reported on here AFAIK.

Was a year ago. But it was over 500 miles indeed. Maybe that's the explanation, although I'd like to see the 500-miles rule in writing somewhere..

I doubt you will get it in writing (because it isn't a policy) but I have seen stories on here (and Facebook groups) where when faced with a significant delay at DOH for a EU bound flight people have been rebooked for direct flights into LHR to avoid missing connections on separate tickets.