Atlanta Airport

[haltz]

I've never run as fast in any airport than Dallas.

I did this a couple of weeks ago. I had to close at work on Christmas Eve so I got on a flight on Christmas morning to go see my family in East Texas. I had a flight out of St. Louis at 8:30am to DFW, a tidy layover of an hour or so and then on to my final destination of Tyler, Tx.

We had a non-mechanical, non-weather delay out of STL of close to an hour. The pilot came on and explained it as something to the effect of, "we don't know happened, but we couldn't get the equipment to the gate and the short-staff doesn't give a [expletive] because they don't want to be here today."

We make up a lot of time in the air and I deplane with a surprising 25 minutes between flights. I'm a DFW ninja so I weave my way through A terminal onto the 6th oval of hell known as Skylink and think that I might actually have a chance. I'm headed to a gate where they launch weather balloons, carrier pigeons and flights from Dallas to Tyler. It's a quarter mile past where you think it will be down a blank hallway.

I show up out of breath with 14 minutes to spare and see a sign on the wall that says planes board up until 10 minutes before departure. The gate agents are walking into the gangway shutting the door behind them and I yell/ask "are you still boarding?" I'm thinking that they'll be keeping an eye out for the delayed connecting passenger and happy to see that I made it, but instead they just say no as the door shuts and behind them and they hide. I say "Merry Christmas!" and immediately throw a fit to anyone within earshot with an American Airlines nametag which gets me nothing but a boarding pass for the next flight four hours later.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I think southwest will hold connecting flights for a few minutes in situations like that, haltz. At least one time, I was flying through Midway from Ft. Lauderdale. The original flight was pushed back about 30 minutes and my layover was only about 30 minutes. I asked the agents at Ft. Lauderdale about that and they said the flight in Chicago was being delayed a few minutes to allow us (I guess there were about 7-10 passengers getting on that plane in Chicago) to make the connection. Iirc, they let us all know to please hurry to the next gate once we got to Chicago. Naturally, I ran my ass off not wanting to be left behind. About 10 minutes after I get on the plane with a couple other people, 3 jackwagons show up with food, take their happy ass time sitting down, trying to find seats together (which obviously there aren't going to be any at that point) and we finally push back.

[jim]

I've sprinted through airports twice:

1. Paris, CDG. They changed the terminal of my connecting flight to Geneva. Had to take what felt like a 20 minute bus ride to the other terminal. I made the flight, the closed the door right behind me, but I sat down huffing and puffing. If the airport people wouldn't have been so god damned French and assisted a little bit I wouldn't have had to run like that. At least it was just by myself. My luggage didn't make the connecting flight.

2. Paris, CDG. They changed the terminal of my connecting flight back to the U.S. Had to take what felt like a 20 minute bus ride to the other terminal. We made the flight, but they closed the doors right behind us. If the airport workers weren't so god damned French and helped out a little bit it wouldn't have been an issue. This time I was with my wife and kid who was 11-12 at the time. Royal pain in the ass.

[Freed Roger]

My wife travels to her corp mothership in the south (DC area) - it's a pain in the arse trip.

I will pay extra to fly direct -especially when vacation time is limited. That is the fricken point of flying -to save time. But direct flights out of STL are pretty limited IMO-and a trip to most parts south often involves Charlotte or ATL. We had a notion for a trip to Caribbean -but all the places we were interested in had onerous air travel - this extra cost and time will likely be just enough to keep us in the states.

The pic below looks like a lot of direct from STL, but those flights are limited in availability, and costlier.

[jim]

I guess that's one of the advantages of flying out of Chicago, we can fly direct most of the time. I agree 100% - it's worth the money to save the time. Now that I think of it the only time I have flown through Atlanta was when we flew out of St. Louis. We won't even consider a connecting flight unless there is no other choice.

[cardinalkarp]

O'Hare has always been our "nightmare" airport. Any time we've had issues, whether it's delayed/cancelled flights, lost luggage, etc. O'Hare is always in the mix somehow. Close behind is Miami International.

We'll be flying to ATL in February, but won't be connecting anywhere so hopefully it doesn't cause any issues.

We've learned that pretty much anytime you try & push it by having a really short layover (1 hr & under) when having a connecting flight you're just setting yourself up for problems...something ALWAYS seems to go wrong when you try & cut things too close. Having a short layover just isn't worth the stress that comes along with it.

[lukethedrifter]

I guess that's one of the advantages of flying out of Chicago, we can fly direct most of the time. I agree 100% - it's worth the money to save the time. Now that I think of it the only time I have flown through Atlanta was when we flew out of St. Louis. We won't even consider a connecting flight unless there is no other choice.

And you say money is overrated. Only if you have enough.

[lukethedrifter]

I guess that's one of the advantages of flying out of Chicago, we can fly direct most of the time. I agree 100% - it's worth the money to save the time. Now that I think of it the only time I have flown through Atlanta was when we flew out of St. Louis. We won't even consider a connecting flight unless there is no other choice.

And you say money is overrated. Only if you have enough.