cfischer

agreed. 1h30 is not a good idea. PEK can be a zoo.

khkchan

Plan alternate routing. 1 hour 30 mins is not going to work at PEK.

You have to go through connection immigration where you will then be directed downstairs for connection security. There are only 2 lines and often times the queue overruns back to upstairs. The agent may direct you to general security where it is even worse.

A lot of flights will be ground hold at origin, usually results into 30 mins to an hour delay.

My personal MCT at PEK is 3 hours.

moondog

I'm fairly comfortable with 3 hours, as well, but I prefer the ~20 hour approach that Kacee suggested. Basically, PEK is boring place for killing time, so if you fly through there, you might as well make it count by visiting Beijing in the process.

UA_Flyer

The last UA leaving PEK is the 6:25 pm flight to IAD, so you have one extra hour pending on where you are connecting to in the US.

Regarding the PEK connection, I have never missed one connection in the past ten years including one within only 45 min from UA to SQ a couple of months ago. I do admit international to domestic China destinations and vice versa could be an issue even within T3, but international to international is actually painless. Better than International to US domestic at any major US airports. There is really no immigration clearance at PEK when doing I to I transfer like to the US immigration process.

The real bottle neck is the security check into the departure area, other than that the international flights arriving into PEK get landing priority, so unless your departing flights leaves late, the arrival punctuality is fairly good.

One thing PEK can do better is having clear bold signs for the transfer passengers. Show them where to go. I think most of the misconnections take place when transfer passengers don’t know where to go and airport staff can be unhelpful. Arriving and transferring passengers are heading to the same arrival hall and that place can be quite crowded and confusing. However, one you know the routine and know where to go, it is fairly straightforward. If one has APEC card, you can go the far end priority security re-check line into the departure hall, and take you away from the long regular security check.

D3Kingg

I have flown in and out of PEK several times. It's not HKG but a 1:35 min connection time is manageable.