Is a 40 minute layover enough time at the Denver Airport?

[helenk]

Not Disney related, but I always find the best advice here. In May my husband and I are flying to Seattle from Philadelphia. One of the flights stops at Denver at 11:20 am the fight on to Seattle leaves at 12:00. I am worried about delays of course but even without any delays will there be enough time between flights?
The next flight has about a 3 hour layover, which I am not really fond of hanging out at the airport that long.
Any thoughts?

 

[dis_guy]

Provided you do not have to change terminals or have small kids to herd along, sure, that's enough time. We've flown United connecting in DEN many times. For this kind of connection time I just love Denver- gates start with 1 at one end and go to 80 or 90, whatever, at the other end. Really easy to navigate.

 

[nacho113]

It's do-able but you have to hope for no delays (and a seat near the front of the plane would help so that you can deplane more quickly)
You're flying in the spring so should be OK barring a big storm in the area. If your flying in the winter, I'd consider the flight with the longer layover.
A 3 hour layover isn't all that bad, allows for delays on arrival, gives you a chance to grab a bite to eat and most importantly (to us anyway) a chance to use a real bathroom.
Here's our story:
We had a 45 minute layover in Denver the winter before last. We were a few minutes late arriving due to snow in the area. The plane had to wait for a gate to be assigned because they were plowing the snow (another few minutes wait). We were seated in row 29 so took an extra few minutes to deplane. Arrived at gate 25 and were departing from gate 54 (a fair jaunt across the airport) When we were nearing the gate we could hear them paging our names, everyone else was on board. We boarded and they closed the door behind us. Just barely made our connection because of a string of small delays.
Sadly, we had to sit on the tarmac waiting for the plane to be de-iced for over 40 minutes after our mad dash across the terminal.

 

[Jimsig]

An airline has minimum connections times for each airport they fly and should not allow a shorter connection time when booking a flight. Other words, say you are flying from Seattle at 9:30a arriving at Denver at 11:30a. Flights from Denver depart at 11:45a, 12:30p and 3p to Philly. When you make your reservation it will not even show you the 11:45a departure as it does not make their min connection time for Denver. The airlines do not want to go through the hassle and aggravation of rebooking, or trying to rebook, you on a later flight that may or may not have seats. The min connection time applies to you changing planes as well as how long it takes for the airlines to transfer your bags from one flight to another. That said things do happen and a delay may cause you to miss the flight. As a PP said, a seat up near the front of the first plane can be a big help.