Advice regarding connecting flights out of Palma to Barcelona

Where are you flying from Barcelona? If you're headed across the Atlantic or on some other high-cost flight, I wouldn't risk spending the last night in Palma. I'd want to be in Barcelona on the night before departure. Flights get cancelled and delayed all the time. Buying a last-minute one-way ticket home would be an expensive proposition.

I flew home from Barcelona in 2016, and I needed every minute of the 3 hours I had allowed at the airport. There was a major delay at the United check-in counter, and I had a checked bag to deal with.

Yes, we are going to San Francisco but really don’t want to stay an additional night in Barcelona after leaving Majorca so I am hoping to arrange a flight the morning of our flight to SF.

The best solution is to book PMI-BCN-SFO as a single ticket. That way if there is a problem the airline has to fix it. If you book 2 separate tickets ( PMI-BCN & BCN-SFO) if somethign goes sideways, it's your wallet that takes the hit.

If you have to do separate tickets, my advice is get the earliest/earlier flight, especially if you have checked luggage.

Similar to the previous answer : no that is not cutting it too close as long as you book it as one ticket with a connection in Barcelona i.e. (Mallorca to San Francisco) and not two separate tickets i.e. Mallorca to Barcelona, Barcelona to San Francisco; that way if the first flight is late causing you to miss to connection the airline is liable. But I' d only go with the 11:05 if it was cheaper by hundreds of dollars.

Unfortunately we already booked our flights to-and-from Spain with United so I will be booking this leg of our trip with a small Spanish airline, most likely.

You need to look at the specifics, and first answer the question:

If you miss your flight home to SFO, how bad would that be? Check the price of a same-day, walk-up-and-pay ticket from BCN to SFO. I just did a quick 'n dirty search on Google, and that suggests you would be looking at tickets in the range of roughly $1000 to $1350, per person (X how many in your party). That's for flying tomorrow ("put me on the next flight" price); you didn't say when your trip is, but ticket prices would probably be somewhat higher during the busy summer season, if that's when you're going. So, that gives you some rough idea "how bad it would be" if you missed your flight.

Then ask yourself, how comfortable are you with that risk?

There's no right or wrong answer, just what you are comfortable with.

Of course, if the flights are on time and everything goes according to plan, it's all good. But, sometimes things don't go according to plan.

I'm quite risk averse so I would opt for the earlier flight. A 5 hour layover isn't really that long, I don't know what your luggage situation would be, whether it will be carry on or checked but if it's checked then you'll need to factor in retrieving it from the Mallorca flight and then checking it in for the SFO flight.

I fly to and from Palma direct from the UK very regularly and whilst the airport is fairly small it is very busy, particularly during the summer months. I have experienced delays at times albeit not particularly long and whilst they've never been much of an issue for me I've never had to connect to a long haul flight to the US.

Thank you all for your advice. I will make plans accordingly.