FTMucGer

I would go along and think that most MCT should be enhanced, however, especially on international flights going to Europe I often see them arrive early (if everything goes well), so even with a short MCT you can make your flight.

BearX220

Then I would like to know why CO sells gazillions of XXX-EWR-YYY connections where XXX-EWR is an RJ feeder flight, EWR-YYY is an international or transcon flight, and the connection time is :45 to 1:15 or so; but XXX-EWRs are routinely groundstopped at origin for NYC ATC congestion even in fine weather, run :60 to 1:30 late, and everyone routinely misses their connections. MCTs should take into account actuarially probable delays. It's clear to me that CO MCTs through EWR, esp. Term A / Term C transfers, work only in a perfect world that doesn't exist.

Athena53

One of my Murphy's Laws of Travel: if you schedule a long layover, your flight will arrive early. If you have a short layover, your flight will be delayed. The corollary: and if your flight into the connection airport is delayed, even if it's due to bad weather at your arrival city, your flight OUT of that airport will leave on time.

gleff

Lots of misinformation and incorrect speculation in this thread about who determines minimum connection times and why.

And airlines do NOT want misconnecting passengers.

But most importantly why are people kvetching about minimum connection times, talking about how unrealistic they are, if you do not feel the minimums are reasonable then don't book an itinerary that involves just the minimum connection time.

Who exactly is forcing y'all to do 30 minute connections @ MEM or 30 minute on-line (DL-DL) connections @ DTW or MSP?

And be careful what you wish for in higher minimum connection times. Next time you NEED a quick connection to make the last flight of the night, minimum connection times have been lengthened so that connection is now illegal, you force it with separate tickets and then misconnect and it's YOUR problem whereas if it was a legal connection it would have been the airline's...

u2fan

I agree with the above and there is one other misconception about MCT here and it has to do with bags. Often bags are quicker than passengers - checked bags will make it to the connecting flight before the passenger does.

Kiwi Flyer

There are a number of problems with MCTs varying by time of year, one of which being the hub & spoke schedules which so many airlines rely on would be forever changing to cope with frequent changes in MCTs.

Loren Pechtel

The problem is the airlines use averages and even then they sometimes don't get it right. I've been given an international->domestic connect that had no hope of making the baggage recheck cutoff even when things went well.

We know better. The Kettles don't.

Aviatrix

Unfortunately some airline booking sites leave you no choice but to book those tight connections - because the tight connection is the only thing they will offer.

For example, klm.com used to have a facility to select flights one by one on a multi-sector itinerary... now it doesn't any more. You type in your point of departure and destination and accept what you get given - there is no way of forcing a longer lay-over in AMS. The only way round this is to book via a third-party site like Expedia, but this then has the drawback that KLM won't deal with you direct over things like seat allocations.

stut

OTOH, some airports have an excellent 'direct transfer' service for short connections. In MUC and VIE in particular, there's been a number of times where I've been whisked off the airbridge, on to the tarmac in a minibus, via the immigration office where necessary, and deposited at my connecting flight, with baggage, a few minutes later. Even CDG can muster this up when they feel like it.

VivoPerLei

Sometimes the airlines thrust it upon you. I booked a three hour international-US connection through YYZ recently because I know that airport can be difficult to transit. AC cancelled my later connecting flight and changed me to an earlier one, giving me a one hour twenty six minute connection. Not sure what MCT is for YYZ, but I know If I kept that schedule I very likely wouldn't have made it. I rescheduled a better connection through YUL.

goalie

your bolded portion (with the added red by me) hits the nail on the head-plane and simple

yup and i had this very argument with a dear friend of mine. he's a kettle but a very dear friend yet no matter what i try and 'splain to him, he won't listen. he flies simply based solely on price and minimum total travel time. i warned him that his 46 minute dl/dl conx at jfk was pushing it as even tho it was legal, with runway construction at jfk a given for delays and then with the possibilty of irrops (either wx or mx), he was asking for trouble (and not to mention that it was dl express to mainline). i suggested he route either bos/atl, bos/dtw or bos/msp but he didn't want to as that would add more travel time and sure enough....took off late ex-bos, arrived late at jfk, had to wait to pick up his bag planseside as it was an rj (told him that would be an issue as well as he thought he could carry his bag on with him) and having to schlepp from dl's express mainline gates (told him that could be an issue as well), he did have a mis-conx. last flight out so he ended up overnighting (dl did put him up) but all he did was b!tch, moan & groan how this never happens on wn . maybe one day he'll listen to me?

FTMucGer

but probably for a heavy fee, or?

tjl

Perhaps more importantly for business travelers who need to use designated travel agents to book business travel, the travel agents might not know which connections are not realistic.

stut

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

Nope, free. On discount Y tickets to boot. And no tips expected.

Airports that get the bulk of their business through transfer traffic could learn a thing or two!

stupidhead

Because airlines are badly run business and even worse at contingency planning.