Just got an email from American Airlines that they are changing our connecting flight to Chicago OHare to get our plane to FCO. It looks like we will have 1 hour and 40 minutes between flights. I'm concerned that this won't be enough time to make flight to Italy. We won't be checking our bag. We've always had longer layovers so I never noticed the amount of time between planes before. Any thoughts?
Posted by
Chicago/Rural WI
811 posts
Maggie, an hour and 40 minutes will be plenty of time at O'Hare to get to your connecting flight to Italy. I am fairly certain you will not have to go through security again, as many international American Airlines flights depart from the same terminal (Terminal 3) as domestic arrivals/departures. Buon viaggio!
Posted by
Edwardsville, IL, United States
10 posts
Hi, Maggie. AA did the same thing to us. I called reservations and had them switch us back to an earlier flight arriving in Chicago from STL. I didn't want to risk any delays leaving STL since there is only one flight to Rome. There were no problems with switching to an earlier flight.
Posted by
Los Angeles, CA, USA
1449 posts
Maggie, have them put you on an earlier flight. Your concern is well founded. If you go to http://www.flightstats.com/go/FlightRating/flightRatingByRoute.do and look at the on-timer performance, you'll see that about 1/3 of the flights from St. Louis to Chicago are late, the average delay looks to be around 45 minutes and can be much higher. I try to give 3 hours between flights because the opportunity cost is so high; I'd rather be cooling my heels in an airport reading a magazine but get to my destination, than miss a flight and not be able to get to the destination for hours or sometimes days. The good 'ol days of flying are gone, when they could put you on "the next flight out". Planes these days are pretty full, and often there just isn't room to get 2 dozen people who missed a flight out anytime soon on a different flight.
Posted by
Puyallup, WA, USA
881 posts
Hi, Maggie.
I would call your travel agent or the airline and check. Most airports have a listing in the airline booking databases that shows minimum connection times for each airport, and it's even broken down by your type of connection (domestic-domestic, domestic-international). A pretty standard time for domestic-international is about 2hrs. (Min.) If they are below that minimum, most airlines will accommodate you if they can.
Since your flying to one of the busiest airports in the world, and catching an international flight, I'd see if you can get things changed. Chris