Anyone flown through IAD - Washington?

[zippy99]

Just a quickie, I am looking to book flights tomorrow with Disney direct (as the price is good and I can pay a deposit)

My choices are US Airways via Charlotte - leaving LHR at 10.05 and getting to MCO at 18.06 with a 2 connection time.

I then came across some United flights for £4 more that fly via Washington (IAD) departing at 7.30am and arriving in MCO at 14.05 - there is just over an hour to collect bags, clear immigration and board again..

I know last year via Miami it took us around 40 minutes from getting off the plane to getting to the waiting area to board the next flight and that is a much busier airport I think.

Anyone flown through Washington before and know how busy it is?

 

[FaithTrustPixieDust*]

I can't speak for connections, but immigration from IAD to Manchester in June was busy - if I remember correctly, we queued for almost an hour, which is a tiny amount of time compared to most US airports I've been to!

 

[FaithTrustPixieDust*]

.

 

[Kath2003]

I would never accept a flights with connection time of under 90 minutes - I like 2 hours to be sure. I have sprinted between terminals before on a 90 minute connection to make it.....

 

[tigger137]

After our last experience at IAD we said we'd never transit there again. Fly into there as a final destination yes, but not transit.

We had 2hrs 20m transit time and thought that was plenty. Even with thinking that we'd have to go to the main concourse for Immigration then back out to another concourse for our next flight, we planned to have a meal in between flights. And when we arrived at Concourse C and discovered it had its own Immigration we thought that was a real bonus.

Wrong! Immigration was one of the worst organised we've seen and was ridiculously slow. Separate queue for each booth so if you had a 'problem child' in front of you, you were stuck. We, and others, tried changing (not cutting) lines but the officials wouldn't let us.

Finally through Immigration, head around the corner - into Security! What? We'd been through Security at LHR, on the aircraft and then into Immigration so in 'clean' areas since the last security check. Why on earth did we need to go through Security again just to get onto the concourse? Not only that, again it was incredibly slow and poorly organised.

We didn't get onto Concourse C until it was already boarding time for our next flight. We ran the full length of Concourse C, which leads into Concourse D, and barely made our flight. Exhausted, hungry and extremely irritated!

On our return journey we had a little more time to discover that Dulles really is not a nice airport to spend time in, very cramped and claustrophobic.

I agree with others that I wouldn't accept a transit time of less than 90 minutes at any US airport.

If you do decide to fly that route, make sure you check what your next flight options are from IAD-MCO and have the details with you in case you miss the connection. If there are plenty of later flights then it might be worth the risk, although of course you're not guaranteed there would be availability.

 

[zippy99]

Many thanks for the responses - we have booked flights today that allow us a longer connection time via Newark.

 

[jb68]

Many thanks for the responses - we have booked flights today that allow us a longer connection time via Newark.

I think that's wise
We flew into Dulles at Easter and it took us 3 hours (yes, 3 hours!) to get through immigration!