Five Essential Considerations When Booking Connecting Flights

Booking flights online provides the adventure-seeking internet surfer hours of fun, hopefully resulting in the dream trip at the lowest possible price. Whether making all arrangements in the comfort of home or waiting for that call-back from the travel agent, check out these five essential considerations when booking connecting flights.

Nothing quite says “nightmare trip” like badly arranged connecting flights. Even for those preferring to entrust the plans to a local travel agent, it doesn’t hurt to review these suggestions.

 

One: Make connections at the same airport

Be aware that not all major cities have only one airport for international and domestic flights.

You might want to check this out before agreeing to arrive at La Guardia and connect with a flight leaving from JFK airport in New York. Although, if you’re an adventure-seeking risk-taker, you might enjoy the fast-paced obstacle course ride in a New York taxi.

I arrived at La Guardia after an incredibly long flight from Ethiopia, only to discover our expert in the travel office for World Vision had my connecting flight to Spokane leaving within the hour from JFK. Fortunately, both flights had been scheduled with United, so I only had to grab my suitcase, rush through customs and let the United staff handle the bag’s placement on the domestic aircraft.

The Oregon nurse traveling with me had experienced the sprint to the finish on a trip home from Somalia years earlier. As we ran through the airport and out to the sidewalk, Katherine assured me that the NY cab would get us there before wheels up.

The New York landscape flew by. I squeezed my eyes shut—waiting for the sound of shattering glass and crunching metal. With a screech of brakes, the passenger door sprang open, and the race to the departure lounge commenced.

With my beet-red face and gasping breath, I presented my boarding pass to the agent standing in front of the already locked door to the jetway. Once seated on the plane, my colleague said, “Didn’t I tell you we’d make it? Those NY cabbies are the best.”

 

Two: Make connecting flights only between partnering airlines.

International travel thrust this mistake right to the top of my need a miracle to make it list, but the same can happen with connecting domestic flights.

One missions-minded travel agent arranged our flights with the greatest possible financial savings in mind. Lowest possible fare was the hallmark of their agency. In fact, they could not be persuaded otherwise, when I suggested that we would be hard-pressed to make our connection in Brussels.

We left Geneva knowing that we’d need to rush from the arrival to the departure area. Turned out to be worse than expected, though. We’d not been scheduled on a partner carrier, so we had to get our luggage out and check-in as though our trip originated in Belgium.

Fortunately, the flight to Africa ran a little behind schedule, so huffing and puffing, we got to the departure area as the agent was closing the door to the jetway. It felt so good to sit down, at last.

 

Bonus: Considerations One and Two illustrated in a single European connection.

A missionary family we’ve served with in West Africa for years took advantage of the missions travel service that offered lower fares back to the States.

The family of five and their single lady missionary teacher arrived at Heathrow airport in London, but their connecting flight had been scheduled to leave from Gatwick. The second blow came when the connection involved another carrier altogether.

The family had to retrieve all twelve bulging suitcases from the baggage area at Heathrow and add the six carry-ons to the load. The three adults had quite a challenge to maneuver the wobbling carts over to the shuttle bus.

By the time they arrived at the Gatwick check-in counter, their flight had already gone. They had to haul all the luggage out of the airport and over to one of the airport hotels for the night.

Of course, all of the other connections had to be rescheduled, not to mention notifying their airport pick-up folks.

Suggestion: Avoid connections that involve separate airports. Even if you don’t change airports, you’ll want to be sure your connecting flight has a partnership agreement with your original carrier. If not, you’ll need to retrieve your luggage and check in at the counter as though your trip originated with them.

 

Three: Allow enough time to make the connecting flight.

This applies to domestic, as well as international connections. The following is a partial list from Murphy’s Law of what could go wrong:

• Delayed arrival. More than once, I’ve had to strongly persuade a travel agent that I did not want to take the next possible flight out of LAX. The airport in Los Angeles is enormous, not to mention how few flights actually set wheels on the tarmac on-time. What looks good on paper isn’t always realistic.

Advice: Check the internet to see how often your flight arrives on time at the airport you’re making the connection.

 

• Heavy aircraft traffic. Even when the travel agent allowed sufficient time to walk the long distance in the spread out Chicago airport, my plane had to circle the airport—one among dozens of planes layered in the atmosphere that day—for forty-five minutes. I enjoyed a real cardio workout to make my connection.

Suggestion: Check to see if the nearest, smaller airport offers a similar connecting flight. Most major airports have an alternate option.

 

• Extraordinarily long distance from arrival gate to departure area. Many airports have separate terminals for international and domestic flights. A shuttle of some sort connects the two, but factor in the time from disembarking one plane and handing the agent the boarding pass for the connection when booking that leg of the journey. Airports such as Charles de Gaulle outside of Paris, have a shuttle that takes passengers to all of the gates of their domestic and international flights but think turtle not hare when allowing for connection time. They stop at every lettered area. In addition, it’s not uncommon to need to fast-walk thirty minutes to get to the shuttle areas after leaving the plane.

Suggestion: If unfamiliar with the layout of the specific airport, you can easily obtain terminal maps from a Google search. Don’t be fooled by lettering. In Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, Terminals 2E and 2F are not sitting side-by-side but a healthy jaunt and a shuttle ride apart.

 

• Flight overbooked. This is a real hassle if you have a tight schedule, but provided me a free round-trip to Holland from KLM one year. If you’re not in a hurry, overbooking can greatly improve your trip. The year before I left for missions, my friend—Jane—and I gladly gave up our Economy Class seats to take the later flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu. There’s just nothing like sitting in First Class on the way to Hawaii for a week’s vacation. (We’d managed seven nights at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and round-trip airfare from Washington D.C. to Honolulu for $435 already, so going First Class on the final leg was icing on the cake.)

Suggestion: Allow more time than you think you’ll need to make the connection.

Don’t let the travel agent squeeze you into the next available flight if you have to change terminals. Relaxing in the departure lounge with a cold drink in hand far outweighs the hassle of missing your connection.

When making international connections, a one-hour window is often eaten up with surprises, so we never let them give us the flight leaving only an hour later. Too much ground to cover and no room for any of the above interferences.

 

Four: Avoid total reliance on the special assistance folks.

Thinking you might just get a wheelchair and let the Special Assistance Team take you from the plane to your departure gate? That would take the guesswork out of how to get there, and you could rest those legs. If you’re on the domestic circuit, you may be right.

It’s not that certain when making international connections. I like the long walks between the hours of sitting on planes, but if our flights had to be booked too close for the normal route, asking for assistance usually helped. The Special Assistance Team knows shortcuts and has keys to restricted doors they can whiz us through to our soon-to-depart aircraft.

Last year, we hit a glitch in the plan. The flight attendant asked for Special Assistance for me, though I protested we should have enough time. Okay, just take the help and relax, right?

My colleague and I chatted merrily with the first lady, who passed us off to a guy at some transit point for assistants. He took us to the next point and told us to wait right there for the next lady. I didn’t want to mess up their system, but the time ticked away on the large overhead clock. My talking watch heralded the advancing boarding time for our flight from Paris to San Francisco. No lady came, though we did ask after her whereabouts several times.

Finally, I stood, announcing to my colleague that she could stay if she chose, but we’d miss our flight if we didn’t just take ourselves to the gate. We knew where it was from there so didn’t really need the assistance.

It was a sprint to the gate. Anne-Lise struggled with the awkwardly asymmetrical wheels of the luggage cart our escort insisted should hold our carry-ons. The flight had nearly all passengers on board when we arrived. We’d have missed the once-a-day flight had we waited for the Special Assistance lady. Whew!

Suggestion: Research your trip enough to know how much to entrust into the service of the Special Assistance Team, if you find you need help.

 

Five: Inevitable interruptions may derail connections.

When the weather jumps into the challenge, just sit back and relax. Can’t do anything about it, right? The following are a few of my many weather-related experiences:

• Ice on the wings. One March, we sat in the plane on the Amsterdam tarmac for three hours, while the wings were de-iced. Sadly, our friends had driven four hours for what should have been a leisurely lunch together to meet their little boys. The delay taking off in Holland, dropped that fun time to a talk-while-we-walk from the customs area to the departure lounge.                                                                                                                                                                          My colleague told the two tiny boys holding out carnations to us to find someone else to give their flower to because we had to get our bags through customs. How were we to know the little tykes were the sons of our friends? Painful reminder of plans gone awry.

• Weather event unrelated to our flight plan. Why should a typhoon in Taipei cause a thirteen-hour delay of our connecting flight from Zurich to Tel-Aviv? Because that’s where our El-Al aircraft had to land before picking us up on the way home. The Swiss Air folks gave us a day room in a five-star hotel, along with vouchers for two meals in their restaurant, so we didn’t mind.

• Too hot to take-off. Our flight from Burkina Faso should have left at 11:30 p.m. but the desert air proved too hot for the aircraft’s lift. Unfortunately, the airport is closed and locked up at midnight. All of the passengers spent the three and a half hours waiting for the air to cool walking around the parking lot. We did get a short time sitting on the one curb in front of the building, but we rejoiced when they unlocked those doors again.

• Dangerous storm over airfield. Earlier this month, our flight from Paris to Bamako, Mali had to be diverted to Abidjan, Ivory Coast because it was too dangerous to try to land in the monsoon storm over the airfield and city of Bamako. Unfortunately, no visa for Ivory Coast meant that we waited out the storm inside the aircraft on the tarmac. Five hours later, we resumed our flight, arriving eight hours late.

Suggestion: After doing everything possible to plan for smooth connections, hold loosely to those flight plans.

 

Final Suggestion: Provide flight numbers, not just arrival times for the airport pick-up. Friends and family who enjoy following the itinerary can use the internet to track each leg of the journey.

Bon Voyage!