Someone once said that “Minimum Connecting Time” is the amount of time it takes an Olympic sprinter to get between gates with no luggage.
Whether or not you find that humorous may well depend if you have missed a flight lately. But increasingly, it does feel as if “Minimum Connecting Time” – aka MCT has really become a joke.
Technically, the term means the time a traveler needs to make a connection, with luggage, and it is dependent on a number of things, including the airline, the airport, whether or not it is a connection between the same airlines.
And as with many things, it is an inexact science.
It perhaps goes without saying that connecting times are based on able-bodied adults. Which means if you know you move slowly, or will be traveling with young children and/or babies, it’s a wise idea to allow a little extra time.
Ditto if you absolutely have to make that connecting flight, arriving earlier won’t hurt. And these days, there are so many airports with Wifi, you won’t even add much down time. Or you could actually do something old-fashioned and fun like reading a book. Or buy an alternative meal to the food sold on planes. (Only the airlines could make airport food routinely look good.)
Having said all that, some MCTs are flat out unrealistic. In Frankfurt, for example, where transit passengers go through passport control, the MCT is 45 minutes. I don’t have a single regular European client who feels comfortable there with less than an hour, preferably an hour and a half.
London, Heathrow, the airport so many love to hate, has a variety of times, and much depends on the terminal connections. Once an intra-terminal bus is involved, all bets are off. But the inter-airline MCTs routinely seem over optimistic.
Another international travel problem is Dulles, where repeatedly I have been told that the customs and immigration area is too small, and that clients have or have almost missed their connections to domestic flights.
Even for wholly U.S, travel, there are still plenty of potential pratfalls. Some are relatively simple airports, with ridiculous distances. As any United flier knows, the Denver concourse is great for a cardio-vascular workout, bad for a tight connection. Especially if you are connecting to or from United Express, which is now mostly housed in an auxiliary terminal, even further from the main gates.
Other airports, like Dallas, Chicago and Atlanta, are problematic because of their size. With airline consolidation and the number of gates for each carrier, the odds have gone up that even an online connection might involve changing concourses.
If you are changing between airlines, on the other hand, you almost always want to increase the suggested connecting time. One, because airlines often won’t hold the plane these days for an online connection, let alone for someone else’s flight. And in some airports, JFK and SFO for examples, you may have to exit and re-enter security.
Another especially problematic situation in many airports is transferring from a commuter plane to a larger plane. While MCTs are often the same despite plane size, they perhaps shouldn’t be, for at least three reasons:
First, smaller planes are more likely to be at outlying gates; second, because smaller planes tend to be delayed more often, especially in bad weather; third, because even if a carrier decides to hold a flight for some late-arriving passengers, a smaller plane will simply be less likely to have a number of people connecting to any given other flight. And thus, less reason to delay a second plane.
Finally, there’s the comfort factor. This could be true even if you have say, a 50-minute connection that is legitimate, and the planes are likely to be in the same zip code at the airport. If you are a nervous flier, and you will be sweating the connection in advance and on the day of flight, consider just taking a longer connection if available. As I have told some clients, it it’s going to ruin your day worrying even if you make it, make things easier on yourself and book a longer connection. It doesn’t guarantee a smooth travel day, or even that you will avoid a run through the airport, but odds are, it will be more relaxing.
And once upon a time, that was part of the point of air travel.
(Photo of O’Hare Airport Tunnel by Christopher Blizzard on Flickr)
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
