DCA 30 Min Connection

[everreal15]

Hey everyone, we have a trip coming up mid September for our Disney vacation and we are super excited.

We had to reschedule our airline tickets quite a few times since March with schedules constantly moving around and some flights no longer being available. We are currently booked with AA (Started with Southwest back in May when we were originally going) and after rescheduling with them a couple weeks (Booked with AA, they changed flight times and I rescheduled to a different AA flight) I noticed we have a 30 Min connection in DCA.

I was doing some digging and trying to see if this would be an issue. Right now our "estimated" arrival time on their app says it should arrive 10 mins early giving us 40 mins instead of 30. However we are flying from ALB and on an ERJ-145 plane so we will probably be arriving in gave 35X and need to shuttle to the main C terminal for our connection.

This made me a bit nervous but I am thinking with not as many people flying right now we should be able to shuttle over pretty quickly.

Has anyone flown out of DCA recently or have any experience with connecting to a flight from 35X? If it doesn't seem like its possible I can try to call and see what else is available.

Thanks!

 

[Akck]

Sorry, can’t help with DCA, but we had one schedule change that gave us a 35 minute connection time and while I know we could make it from gate to gate, all it would take is a delayed takeoff or delay getting to the gate (have waited 20 minutes for gate to clear), to miss the connection. I changed flights to give us more time. You also could have checked bags not make it to the flight with that short of connection. I’d call and discuss the short connection time as it may have been a computer generated change and there may be better connecting cities available.

 

[_19disnA]

No specific knowledge of Reagan, but with any airline you can look on their website to see the actual times associated with flights in the past few days. This might give you more confidence is they have typically been on time or had delays. Not sure how any app can 'estimate' future arrival times compared to what is scheduled. Changing terminals at any airport involves more time and typically small regional jets are all located in their own terminal, particularly at bigger airports. Does AA let you make changes to your ticket without extra charges? Looking at their website can give you an idea of what other choices there are or if there are other later flights to your destination that same day in the event you miss your connection. Some changes you can do yourself online, but other things may require you to call.

Good reason to avoid the last flight of the day, since you are stuck if you miss your connection or some type of mechanical issue leaves you stranded overnight.

 

[everreal15]

Sorry, can’t help with DCA, but we had one schedule change that gave us a 35 minute connection time and while I know we could make it from gate to gate, all it would take is a delayed takeoff or delay getting to the gate (have waited 20 minutes for gate to clear), to miss the connection. I changed flights to give us more time. You also could have checked bags not make it to the flight with that short of connection. I’d call and discuss the short connection time as it may have been a computer generated change and there may be better connecting cities available.

No specific knowledge of Reagan, but with any airline you can look on their website to see the actual times associated with flights in the past few days. This might give you more confidence is they have typically been on time or had delays. Not sure how any app can 'estimate' future arrival times compared to what is scheduled. Changing terminals at any airport involves more time and typically small regional jets are all located in their own terminal, particularly at bigger airports. Does AA let you make changes to your ticket without extra charges? Looking at their website can give you an idea of what other choices there are or if there are other later flights to your destination that same day in the event you miss your connection. Some changes you can do yourself online, but other things may require you to call.

Good reason to avoid the last flight of the day, since you are stuck if you miss your connection or some type of mechanical issue leaves you stranded overnight.

Thanks for the responses. I did check the past few flghts times and it was arriving on time. But that doesnt mean all of the planes that share gate 35X we also arriving on time. Like Akck said, all it takes is one of the planes that share that gate to be late to throw us off a pretty tight window and then we would be stuck on the next plane which doesn't arrive in MCO until 7 PM. Since we always plan on doing a least half a park day on our arrival day it was just a bit too risky.

Fortunately I was able to call AA and they swapped me to a flight with a much more normal connection in Charlotte. It arrives a half an hour later than the other but I'd rather take a guaranteed 30 mins over possibly missing a whole day of everything doesn't go prerfectly.

Thanks again for the replies, have a great day!