How much time for a layover

[carlnlisa]

We have been looking at flights and are thinking about organising our own domestic flights rather then connecting with our international ones. If we did this how much time would you recommend having between our landing and departing time at Lax? Would 3 hours be plenty?

 

[WanderlustNZ]

We have been looking at flights and are thinking about organising our own domestic flights rather then connecting with our international ones. If we did this how much time would you recommend having between our landing and departing time at Lax? Would 3 hours be plenty?

The first thing that you should know about me is that I'm very cautious. I don't take too many gambles with my travel, even if the odds are in my favour.

For this reason, I like a good 5+ hours between bookings (preferably more). On my last trip I stayed overnight in LA on the way there, and had a 10 hour layover on the way back (we booked a hotel day room for a shower and nap).

When you make your bookings separately, you will have a lot of issues if your first flight is delayed and you miss your second. The one home would be the biggest concern as I would hate to miss a connecting international flight and pay out of pocket for a new one. Remembering that the recommended check-in time for international flights is 2 hours, and you will need to first pick up your bags from one flight, cart them to another part of the airport, and check in for the next. Any delay over an hour and you would be pushing it. Also, with such a small connecting window, I'm not confident that travel insurance would pay you back. Not worth the risk in my opinion.

 

[carlnlisa]

There is another flight that is a option for us which is 4 hours after we land. The flight home doesn't worry is to much as we would have 8 hours between flights, it is just landing in and flying out of LAX that we are unsure of.

 

[Tashinwdw]

I would think 4 hours should be enough but when we went I didnt want to risk anything plus it was the first trip with the kids on flights and I didnt want to push them as just getting to LA took 3 flights so wanted to give them a break before heading to Orlando. We put a day between our flights and stayed a night in LA when we arrived and before we left, just to make sure.

I am sure there are lots of others that did flights not that long after landing.

 

[dollarmite]

On our last trip we flew from Brisbane to New York via LAX. It was all booked under the same Qantas flight/booking, so we didn't have any say in the length of time in LAX. I think the stop was about 2 hours (or maybe just slightly longer), and I was really worried we'd miss our connection, but long story short, we made it. Had we missed it, we'd (presumably) have been put on the next flight seeing as it was all considered 'one' flight.

Slightly longer story - we left Brisbane late (which was the norm for all our QF flights that trip, along with crap service ), arrived in LAX on time, spent forever in customs with me worried the whole time that we'd miss our connection (lots of flights arrived at once), and then practically ran to the connecting flight area. Security took an obscene amount of time with my contact lens solution, to the point I told them just to keep it (which somehow spurred them in into speeding things up). We arrived at the gate with time to spare. We boarded the plane and were told there'd be a delay due to a mechanical issue. At that point a few other people and I got up and walked off as we weren't flying on a plane with a mechanical issue and they ended up putting everyone on a new plane anyway.

I've had 3 hour stopovers in other countries and never had an issue, so I think 3 hours is probably a good amount of time.

 

[FireflyFi]

I'm glad to see the consensus is about 3 hours should be fine. My trip later in the year has a layover of 3 hours and 5 minutes

It was either that or six hours, and was the difference between landing in Boston in late afternoon or landing in the late evening.

I figured 3:05 would be enough - when booking through an agent two years ago our layover was just 2:10! And this was through Virgin, so even though it was all booked on one ticket, we had to change terminals. Add onto that, we had some bogan on the plane who got drunk and made some kind of disturbance, so when we landed, we had to wait for the authorities to come on and escort him off.

We ended up running to catch our flight and then found the attendant in Melbourne hadn't booked us into the LAX to JFK flight, so my two friends and I were scattered all over the plane in middle seats.

 

[WanderlustNZ]

I've had 3 hour stopovers in other countries and never had an issue, so I think 3 hours is probably a good amount of time.

Part of the reason I'm cautious is because I have missed a connecting flight and it was awful.

I once had a slightly less than 3 hr layover in Milan, but I missed my connecting flight when my flight was delayed close to 2hrs in Heathrow. Fortunately the two flights were under one booking and I didn't loose any money. Unfortunately I had to sit around in Milan airport all day waiting for my next flight. It took them a few hours just to find an alternative flight to put me on, and then once I was rebooked, my new flight was delayed about 4 extra hours. If the wait had been as little as fifteen minutes longer, I also would have missed the cruise I was booked on that evening. It was a long stressful day, and not one I'm keen to repeat.

The problem with flight delays is that while they may not be 'likely', they are also not completely uncommon. I guess you have to weigh up how upset you would be if you had to pay top dollar for last minute replacement flights (presuming there are still flights with availability) and go from there.

 

[LeanneDownUnder]

Airlines will also have a minimum amount of time they consider reasonable to "cover" you and every airport and airline is different so even when you are ticketed with 1 ticket you still need to make sure your time are within the airlines required time frame (and I'm sure 3 hours are).

When we flew into to DFW last year we only had 1 hour 40 mins to our connecting flight all ticketed through Qantas, when I questioned the short amount of time I was told the minimum required time for connections in that airport was 1 hour and 30 mins and if we missed our flight we would just be put on the next flight because we were within the airline criteria.