Connecting Flight in Heathrow Terminal 3

From your description, you don’t have a connecting flight as you said the flights are on two different itineraries. You said separate bookings. Is this correct?

If I am correct, with or without checked bags, being nervous makes sense. I allow a 4 hour cushion when I have a layover at Heathrow within the same terminal. I have never checked a bag so when I changed planes to a separate booking at Term 3 in Heathrow, I didn’t go through passport control. I did have to go through security.

https://www.heathrow.com/connecting-flights

Plug your specific info into the above and see what you get.

From memory 90 minutes is the minimum connecting time for Heathrow T3 on a single ticket. You haven't given yourselves much over that for separate tickets. T3 is the oldest terminal still in use, and has a very higgledy-piggledy layout with some gates being a good 20 minutes brisk walk from the central area. You would need to clear immigration, collect bags, go between the arrivals and departure sections which are somewhat separated, drop bags, and go through security. With no checked bags, only security.

You can definitely do Europe in one suitcase per person and not check bags. We’ve done it every trip. Just make plans to do laundry and eat lunch or dinner across the street while clothes are washing.

To answer your original question, no, I don't think you have enough time unless you carry on.

We historically have done carry-ons only, but we're flying over on Virgin Atlantic, which has cabin baggage allowances that are just too small for my wife. British Airways has much larger cabin baggage allowances, and which is what we historically have flown.

Anyway, thank you all for answering my questions. Without carry-on-only travel, our original plans just won't work. Thankfully there are other flight options for our connection. We can just push our departure by 3 hours and worse case scenario we're sitting around T3 for a couple hours.

Thanks everyone.

Do you have to go through passport control to get your baggage or is
there an option for recovering your baggage for connecting flights
without passport control?

Looks like you've gotten your question answered, but as a universal rule for the future, baggage carousels are always located after passport control (where there are such checks, of course).

If you ever self-construct a connection that involves picking up checked bags, you will always have to pass through these passport checks to access your bag, which is why "travel carry-on only" is a very common answer to these types of questions.

David,
Where are you flying from? Where are you flying to? which airlines?
These questions affect the time required.

This is TIGHT. Some things which will affect how tight:

• Yes, having checked baggage would mean you have to go through immigration to pick up bags.
• Will you already have your boarding card/printout/e-whatever for the 2nd flight? If not, you will have to go to the second airline's check-in desk, which also requires you to go through immigration and enter the UK.
• What nationality are you? Do you need a visa to enter the UK? Even if you need a visa to enter the UK, if you never go through immigration you stay "Airside" can probably avoid needing a visa.
• Where are you flying from? Intercontinental flights can arrive +/- 1 hour due to winds. + 1 hour will destroy your connection?
• Where are you flying to and with which airline? Intercontinental flights require you to be at the gate earlier than European flight. Some airlines (mostly the economy ones) have very strict gate time limits. One minute late at the gate and you will not fly.

If anything goes wrong with this connection, you are stuck in London, and have to buy a new ticket at walk up price.

You may not need to pick up your checked bags. Lots of airlines will “interline” the bags even if you are on separate tickets. Check with your airlines. Star alliance carriers are pretty good about this while Oneworld and especially AA are bad about doing it

Terminal 3 is pretty dominated by Oneworld airlines these days, although Delta/Virgin and a few non aligned still use it. No Star Alliance as Terminal 2 is their home. If the onward journey is on BA then interlining bags isn't going to happen on two tickets.