Residents of cities like KC are disadvantaged due to the lack of direct flights to most destinations. If one absolutely can't avoid connecting flights, the itinerary should be chosen such that it allows enough time at every point of connection. My thumb rule is atleast an hour for domestic flights and atleast 3 hours for international connections. All said and done folks, one can never plan enough for a trip that involves multiple flights and I'd like to share the example of my first trip to India this year that just didn't go as planned.
My friend who had volunteered to drop me at the airport showed up 30 minutes late at my house. I was so frustrated with the waiting that I just lost my cool and suddenly he knew he wasn't dealing with the friend that he knew all these years. Anyways, we reached the airport 2 hours before departure and after checking in and security check, I started my long wait at the gate. Ten minutes before scheduled departure, I started wondering why they hadn't started boarding yet. So I walked upto the gate where I could see the display and sure enough, with no announcement whatsoever, the flight was now delayed by 30minutes. Twenty minutes later, they delayed it by another hour and so on until finally, when we departed we were delayed by 2.5 hours. I thought I could still make my connection because this would leave me with an hour at Chicago. But the airline had different plans, they made us wait at the tarmac for an hour supposedly because some radar equipment at Chicago was malfunctioning and they expected every flight out of Chicago to be equally delayed. So we ended up reaching Chicago 3.5 hours late, but wait we had to wait another 30mins to find an empty gate that the flight could park at. When the flight was finally parked, the gate wouldn' move down to attach to the flight's door. After 40 minutes of trying to fix it, the pilot got the bright idea that he could taxi to another gate to get the passengers deplaned. So he asked all passengers to get seated with seat-belts on and just as we were ready, the gate was attached to the door and yipee we were out.
So I ran to the flight status display and sure enough my connecting flight to Brussels had departed on time. I then used a courtesy phone and called the airline to re-schedule/re-route me to my final destination, Chennai because I was well aware that there were atleast 3 other options available. The first agent that I spoke to was being difficult and gave me only a couple of options 1) To fly the next day on the same flight which meant that I had to spend the day in Chicago 2) To take a flight to London and then to Mumbai and from there to Chennai which would have got me in there 18hours beyond my scheduled arrival. I absolutely lost it at this point and if she had been anywhere infront of me, I might have reached to pull out her jugular. She hung up on me!! and that was probably the best thing that happened to me on that day. The next agent I spoke to was sweet and re-routed me Chicago to London(American) and London to Chennai via British Airways.
Ofcourse, American Airlines lived up to its standards and the next flight started 2 hours late. When they started distributing the meals, I asked for vegetarian and the attendant gave me an arrogant reply:"Sir, you ought to have requested special meals in advance." I replied that I had confirmed my vegetarian meals thrice but was unable to catch the flight that had special meals for me because American Airlines messed up. The flight landed 2 hrs late in London and the one hour for connection was just enough given that Heathrow is not a small airport by any standards and I had to take a long bus ride to get to my other flight. My journey from thereon was uneventful and I reached home only 4 hours beyond my scheduled arrival. It could have been worse.
