Long haul arriving at 14:10 and the onward domestic flight leaves at 15:05 from the same airport but booked as a completely separate ticket with a different airline. One checked bag. The next flight after that is not until the following morning. Everyone I ask gives me a different answer and the booking site let me buy it without a warning.
No, and I would change it today. On separate tickets you have to collect your checked bag, clear immigration and customs if you are arriving internationally, walk to departures, check in again with a different airline, and go back through security. Fifty five minutes is not enough for the immigration queue alone at most large airports.
The part that makes it worse than it looks is that nobody owes you anything when it fails. Two tickets means airline one's job ended when they landed you. Airline two will call you a no show and the fare is gone, so you are buying a walk up ticket the next morning plus a hotel.
If you cannot rebook onto one ticket, put at least four hours between them for an international arrival, or fly the next morning deliberately and sleep somewhere.
Moved to the 19:40 departure for 60 dollars. Cheaper than the panic I was already feeling.
Sixty dollars for four hours of buffer and a night in your own bed at the far end is one of the better deals in travel.
Also check whether your arriving airport requires you to clear immigration at the first point of entry even if you are only transiting. In some countries you do, in others you can stay airside on a through ticket. That single rule can swing the required time by an hour and a half, and it is on the destination's official border agency site rather than on any booking engine.
The booking site let you buy it because it is selling you two unrelated products, not a journey. Minimum connection times only exist within a single ticket, and even those are published per airport and are frequently optimistic.
If you are ever doing this deliberately, hand luggage only changes the maths enormously. Same airport, domestic to domestic, no bag to collect, and 55 minutes is tight but survivable. Your case is the other one.
Good distinction. The checked bag is what I kept forgetting to factor in.
@layover_lucy · 2mo ago · 2 replies
Update for anyone finding this later, the long haul actually landed 40 minutes late, so on the original plan I would have missed it while still standing in the immigration hall.
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@awkward_ash · 2mo ago
Statistically that is the normal outcome rather than bad luck, which is exactly the argument for buffers.
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