momof4kids1dog1guineapig

I have 7 seats booked ORD-SFO & SFO - HNL in January. We are taking our kids on a surprise trip to Hawaii. I had the flights booked with 1 hour 10 minute connection. Cont. changed the flight times, so we now have a 41 minute connection.

They also changed the return flight so we have only 35 minutes to connect at LAX. I had booked us on a later flight for the LAX to ORD portion that would have given us another hour.

Is it realistic to connect at SFO with only 41 minutes and at LAX with 35? We have 4 kids with us ages 17, 13, 9. 7. We can all run fast, but I don't know want to miss the flights. The flight on the way there is the last flight of the night, so if we miss it we'll end up stuck in SF overnight, which wouldn't be the end of the world, but there goes 1 expensive night in the Royal Hawaiian, our hotel in Honolulu.

JY1024

Since this query is specific to Continental/United, we'll shift it over to the more relevant forum. Thanks! /JY1024, TravelBuzz co-moderator

Scottrick

41 min at SFO is reasonable assuming your plane isn't delayed. 35 min at LAX seems less likely.

momof4kids1dog1guineapig

Whoops - meant to say LAX is 50 minute connection time.

aacharya

Look up alternate connections, and "force" the CO agent to move you to a better one. Maybe ORD-DEN, DEN-HNL?

tnarg-lax

Assuming the flight's on time, that's plenty of time at LAX.

SeaRaptor

I would agree. I recently made a connection going through LAX to SBA that was approximately this length (50-60 minutes each way) and had no issues. 35 minutes would have been tight. With 50 you should be fine.

jgcii

Its very likely that your flights would both arrive and depart from Terminal 7 in LAX which means you would have more than enough time. If you had to go from 7 to either 6 or 8 it would be more challenging.

mikew99

OP, although your connections might be okay assuming the flights are on time, I'm not really comfortable with that assumption -- especially with your outbound flight to SFO connecting to the last HNL-bound flight of the night.

Given that CO changed the flight times, can you at least ask them to put you on an earlier ORD-SFO flight?

momof4kids1dog1guineapig

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll call Continental and see if there's an earlier flight available. I looked online and the only ones with 40,000 mile award seats were very early in the morning - netting a very long layover. (Yes, I was very lucky to get 7 tickets at 40K each for ORD-HNL.)

But since Cont. changed the times, maybe they can open up seats on an earlier flight?

DBCme

While you should never rely on in, UA did hold the last flight out SFO-HNL about two weeks ago; late arriving aircraft from two cities (LAS, PSP..I believe). About 10 passengers in all. They did this with the awareness we would make up the 15 minute delay in the air though.

MarkedMan

Since they changed the timetable, they will rebook you normally. Honestly, the time is more than enough for cx in SFO, all things being equal, you will walk at most 5 minutes from one plane to the next. However, in Jan ex-ORD all things are never really equal, as we know ...

tom911

Add in some rain at SFO, single runway ops, and metering of incoming flights, and I'd want something a little longer in January.