justsawaufo

Hi All,

I was looking to book a RT IAD-BRU in J but the prices were outrages (~10K)
I found that if I position myself in BDA I can reduce the price to 3.8K

I'm contemplating whether I should arrive to BDA a day earlier, or risk the same day AA1900 flight which arrives BDA at 1:41PM. I've never been to BDA and I will only travel with carry on so not sure how quickly I can turn around there? here is my itinerary, any suggestions are welcome.


Re-position flight



Thank you!

jhayes_1780

I'd go early, I can think of much worse places to spend an extra day.

The _Banking_Scot

Hi,

I think Bermuda is one of the US preclearance locations so you would need to allow time for that

Regards

TBS

justsawaufo

Might not be an option for me.. although I'm thinking about it

Thanks, from what I saw it is. I hope my global entry will speed up the process. It appears that the minimum connect time for BDA is 90 minutes. So I'll be cutting it close.

Any other comments from people who've done(?) something similar in BDA will be greatly appreciated.

onthesam

Great find!

miasmal

In my experience, short immigration line at BDA. There is Global Entry, but not sure if you get through an expedited line or a common feeder line to the security check. I think the more pressing issue is whether or not your flight can get delayed going out to BDA. I'd opt to stay a day, but that would eat a bit into the savings ($500 should be enough for a hotel, food, and taxi to sites).

justsawaufo

Thanks, I invested 4-5 hours on this!

Thank you, that's probably the smart thing to do... I appreciate your input

docbert

If this was on United then I'd say go for it - any delays in departure and UA would likely simply allow you to re-route to skip BDA. But multi-airline, this is risky. On Monday, AA1900 landed 1h40m late which would completely blow your connection, likely force an overnight, and have you hoping the local UA staff are willing to follow the flat-tire rule to get you out at all - although most days this flight does seem to run on time.

Plus, June is the start of hurricane season...

If nothing else, I'd be making sure you've got travel insurance that covers something like this, and make sure your connection is above MCT for that combination of airlines/airport (otherwise even insurance won't help).

justsawaufo

One more option here.. I might drive to JFK and catch the 8am B6 1731 flight, this should give me enough time with scheduled arrival of 11:20 AM.. sounds like a solid adventure, even If I'll get to BRU a day later - I'll consider it a good day

WineCountryUA

MCT is the point at which airlibes are willing to take the risk. With separate tickets you have no protections for delays. AA is amoug the worst for ontime prefromance but even the it wasn't there is 5-10% chance of a significant delay, are you willing to take that risk? Add an extra hour or two and you signiicant drop the misconnect odds.

Offshore171

I'd get there a day early. My last two trips to BDA, the immigration line took around 30 mins. Outbound there is US preclearance which can take 15 mins or so. If your inbound flight runs later it could get tight.

There's some accomodation in the town of St Georges or at Grotto Bay, both around 10 mins from the airport. Spend the next morning in St Georges, have pub lunch on the waterfront then head to the airport.

There are definitely worse layovers than a day in Bermuda!

PsiFighter37

If the weather cooperates / Doug Parker is in a good mood...nice find!

Otherwise...good luck

Gig103

When positioning PHX to LAX (1hr flight to connect to business class long hauls) I still go the night before. So that's my advice. I have very low risk tolerance.

justsawaufo

wjbesh

I think that's the right choice. I go to Bermuda often and I always expect a minor delay somewhere in the process. Depending on how many people are working the immigration counters, you can stand in line for 20+ minutes to get your passport stamped when you arrive. Although there's US pre-clearance, the CBP crew at BDA will occasionally (thankfully rarely) X-ray all baggage, which means even with global entry it takes ages to get through. The security line is pretty consistently 15 minutes unless you're there ahead of everyone else. It's not a very high-volume airport, so if two or three flights' worth of passengers get stacked up going through customs or security (which sometimes happens a for the early afternoon departures) bottlenecks can easily develop. Probably because of all of this, BDA has a hard 60 minute cutoff for check-in (I've never been able to get a mobile BP, have to check in at the airport), and I know of multiple colleagues who were turned away from check-in at 55 minutes from departure. Which is all to say if your AA inbound was at all delayed, you could get unlucky and miss the UA outbound. B6 flies old planes to BDA but it's a decently short flight and should give you tons of time.