Airport connections in the USA

[JamieLei]

Hello!

To get to the point, our flight will be:

LHR (Heathrow) - LAX (Los Angeles) (direct, no problems)
SFO (San Fransisco) - IAD (Washington DC) - LHR (Heathrow)

All on United. (Our first choice was Virgin Atlantic, which is direct both ways, but they pulled the promotion... *shakes fist!*)

There's lots of info on the internet about how the procedure works when entering the USA (get off plane, clear immigration, get bags, clear customs, RECHECK bags, clear security, board connecting flight). It's the other way round that I can't find any info about, and from what gather from trawling the internet, transferring from domestic to international is the equivalent of domestic to domestic. So in that case, is there any bag rechecking or customs upon leaving the US? Also we board the flight from SFO as a domestic flight, how do they know we're leaving the USA if we don't clear emigration?

Any info would be much appreciated! *Looks lovingly at orudge*

[Rubidium]

I do not remember having to go through much security from SFO->IAD->AMS, except that I literally needed to walk from the end of concourse D to the end of concourse C (roughly 1,5 km); given all international flights seemed to be going from the end of concourse C you might have to walk that as well; no moving walkways and the terminal bus goes to the main terminal where you would need to walk quite far to get the bus back to the C concourse. It might be that I needed to pass a security 'checkpoint', but I can't remember emigration. If I remember correctly we had to hand over a piece of paper from the visa waiver when boarding the plane leaving IAD.

Going from AMS->IAD->BOS took hours before the immigration and baggage checks were done; 3 hours layover would not have been enough, but the connecting flight had a delay. I have to note that we arrived an hour or so late due to strong headwinds.

This is all information from over half a decade ago though.

[FooBar]

My experience (from around 9 years ago, so I don't know how relevant) from AMS > EWR > LAX and LAX > EWR > AMS was that bags only needed to be collected and rechecked upon entering the US. On the return flight it was handled automatically.

Apparently they only check what comes into the country, and don't about care what goes out.

If I remember correctly we had to hand over a piece of paper from the visa waiver when boarding the plane leaving IAD.

Correct, you have to hand in the piece stapled in your passport when leaving the US.

[bremerjoe]

Hi Jamie,
My wife flies from HAM via NYC to ORD about twice a year and for her it always goes like this:
HAM-NYC-ORD: checking in the luggage in HAM and having to recheck them in in NYC
ORD-NYC-HAM: check the luggage in at ORD and do not worry about them until arrival HAM

[JamieLei]

Excellent - thanks A LOT everyone. So it was true about entering the country being a pain in the arse, but leaving it is no problem.

2 and a half hours should be fine at IAD in that case.

[orudge]

There's lots of info on the internet about how the procedure works when entering the USA (get off plane, clear immigration, get bags, clear customs, RECHECK bags, clear security, board connecting flight). It's the other way round that I can't find any info about, and from what gather from trawling the internet, transferring from domestic to international is the equivalent of domestic to domestic. So in that case, is there any bag rechecking or customs upon leaving the US? Also we board the flight from SFO as a domestic flight, how do they know we're leaving the USA if we don't clear emigration?

They'll check your passport at the gate in IAD, but that's it. (Back in the day they'd take your I-94W green card out of your passport, but they don't put them in any more.) It's really no different to just getting on another domestic flight. Your bags will go straight through. 2.5 hours should indeed be plenty of time.

You do have to pick up and recheck bags if you have a connection after entering the US, but this doesn't apply to you it would seem.

[Chrill]

I flew San Diego -> New York -> Stockholm.

You will check your baggage in at your first airport (in my case, San Diego) and then that's it. It's easy to get out of USA, the difficulty is getting in.

[JamieLei]

Excellent!

Just because some people might be interested, I'm staying on in the States in order to visit friends and get some research for my dissertation done. Which means my routing will end up looking far more like (and it's all costed with United to be affordable),

London (LHR) - Los Angeles (LAX)
(Make own way to San Fran as part of family holiday, then take a train to Seattle because it's cheaper and far more fun than flying it).
Seattle (SEA) - Chigago (ORD) - New York (LGA)
New York (EWR) - Frankfurt (FRA) - Birmingham (BHX)

(Of course, there are now direct flights to Birmingham from EWR by United, and actually it doesn't work out any more expensive at all. But I don't believe that there's any AVOD, and I want to try the Lufthansa A380 service! The whole thing should net just under 12,500 miles, the minimum for a free Star Alliance flight to Europe... *grrr*!)

I was going to consider starting the bmi FF account, but with them being gobbled up by IAG then it's probably not worth it (I don't want useless Avios points!). It does seem that United are the best account to use for this routeing since it looks like they give 100% of miles even for super discounted economy (it's all K class). Although with bmi and Spanair now gone, the value of Star Alliance in Europe seems rather diminished.

[orudge]

(Of course, there are now direct flights to Birmingham from EWR by United, and actually it doesn't work out any more expensive at all. But I don't believe that there's any AVOD, and I want to try the Lufthansa A380 service! The whole thing should net just under 12,500 miles, the minimum for a free Star Alliance flight to Europe... *grrr*!)

There is AVOD on the United (ex-Continental) 757s - I flew them from EDI to EWR, and EWR to MAN a couple of years ago. It does feel kind of weird flying a narrowbody plane across the Atlantic, but it's a nice enough service, and the flights are fairly short too, which helps.

I was going to consider starting the bmi FF account, but with them being gobbled up by IAG then it's probably not worth it (I don't want useless Avios points!). It does seem that United are the best account to use for this routeing since it looks like they give 100% of miles even for super discounted economy (it's all K class). Although with bmi and Spanair now gone, the value of Star Alliance in Europe seems rather diminished.

bmi is pulling out of Star Alliance on the 19th/20th of this month, so yeah, you wouldn't be able to earn on United anyway. Avios are actually less useless than you might think though, especially within Europe, as BA have introduced "Reward Flight Saver", which caps charges/taxes at £27 return. Considering how much tax is usually applied to even short haul flights in Europe, it's usually not worth using miles for such a trip, but with Avios it's actually not so bad. Jen, Olivia and I will be flying MAN - LHR - BER - LHR - ABZ, 27,000 Avios plus £81. Actual paid-for flights would have been £500 or so, and most of those Avios were earned from Tesco Clubcard points and the BA Amex signup bonus.

There are a few other routes that are still fairly decent value with Avios, too - I've ended up using a number of miles for my Dad flying between the UK and Brazil on bmi, 12,500 miles + £85 cash or so each way (plus very low taxes from Brazil to the UK, because fuel surcharges are banned in Brazil). With BA, it'll be something like 15,000 miles + £120, I think, which isn't too much of an increase, and still very good value compared with a £1000 return flight!

[JamieLei]

Speaking of bmi, do we know what BA will do with bmi's long haul routes? All those expat-orientated flights to important but extremely unpatronised destinations like Sierra Leone and Kazahstan? With all the talk about needing to connect the UK with 'new' important destinations in Brazil and China, will BA keep the routes or redirect them to China/Brazil?

Also if bmi are pulling out, I'd have to make sure that the FRA - BHX leg would have a LH code then. At the moment, UA are still booking on bmi, and there's heavy code sharing going on (BHX - EWR I believe is codeshared with bmi and oddly enough, LH as well, as if anyone from Germany would connect in BHX to go to the states... - lovely airport but I don't even know if they can handle transfers there!)

[EXTspotter]

BA based on past experience will bin all the routes that don't really make sense, most of which most were previously run as BA (through a franchise partner called British Mediterranean Airways, which BMI bought in 2007). Routes which were previously very high yielding such as London - Amman have in the last few years become targeted by low cost carriers, mainly Easyjet, and the yields have gone through the floor. As such routes such as Amman, as well as routes already operated by BA, such as London - Manchester and other domestic routes will see a frequency reduction. The remainding medium haul flights are likely to use larger aircraft, probably BA's 767s, with the A320s and A321s currently being used moved into the european fleet. As part of the merger, BA has to hand back 12 slot pairs at Heathrow, of which the frequency reduction and removal of low yielding routes will cover more than these 12, leaving room for expansion into new markets for BA, possibly including destinations yet unserved in China, as well as Manila, Jakarta and Bogata.

Currently, BA is going ahead with at least some of BD's (BMI) summer schedule, with BA codesharing on these routes:
• Yerevan (Armenia)
• Baku (Azerbaijan)
• Addis Ababa (Ethiopia)
• Tbilisi (Georgia)
• Almaty (Kazakhstan)
• Beirut (Lebanon)
• Freetown (Sierra Leone)
As such these are the most likely to survive the route cull.

[orudge]

Speaking of bmi, do we know what BA will do with bmi's long haul routes? All those expat-orientated flights to important but extremely unpatronised destinations like Sierra Leone and Kazahstan? With all the talk about needing to connect the UK with 'new' important destinations in Brazil and China, will BA keep the routes or redirect them to China/Brazil?

In the short term BA doesn't have the aircraft to fly to all these new long-haul destinations, so the bmi routes will remain. There may well be some redeployment, but apparently the summer 2012 bmi schedule will at least run as planned, with planes being repainted into BA colours and so on. BA has in fact just launched codeshares on many of the ex-BMED bmi routes (such as the aforementioned Kazakhstan routes and so on).

Also if bmi are pulling out, I'd have to make sure that the FRA - BHX leg would have a LH code then. At the moment, UA are still booking on bmi, and there's heavy code sharing going on (BHX - EWR I believe is codeshared with bmi and oddly enough, LH as well, as if anyone from Germany would connect in BHX to go to the states... - lovely airport but I don't even know if they can handle transfers there!)

You should be fine. FRA - BHX is technically a Lufthansa flight, but is operated by bmi. Either Lufthansa will keep this agreement in place for a while (Lufthansa operated by BA?), or they'll take over the route themselves, as they've done with some of the LHR routes that bmi was operating.

[EXTspotter]

Speaking of bmi, do we know what BA will do with bmi's long haul routes? All those expat-orientated flights to important but extremely unpatronised destinations like Sierra Leone and Kazahstan? With all the talk about needing to connect the UK with 'new' important destinations in Brazil and China, will BA keep the routes or redirect them to China/Brazil?

In the short term BA doesn't have the aircraft to fly to all these new long-haul destinations, so the bmi routes will remain.

Strictly speaking this is not completely true. It is true that BA has to continue to use all the slots in order to retain them. I can forsee schedule changes on the BMI routes to right-size the capacity and offer better flight times. Where BA and BMI combined would have far too much capacity on a route, I would see the frequencies being rationalised and aircraft being redeployed to new destinations or offering more capacity to other routes.

In terms of BA's longhaul capacity in the short term, with the BMI acquisition, they inherit BMI's one longhaul aircraft, an A330, unfortunately for BA it would be the only A330 in the fleet, hence it probably will not remain around for long. It may be placed with international airline group's other airline, Iberia, which have ordered the A330, however the BMI plane has Rolls Royce engines and the Iberia fleet will all have either GE or Pratt and Whitney engines (I can't remember which), hence it is unlikely they will want the orphan A330. BA itself still has 1 or 2 more new 777-300ER aircraft on order at boeing which are due for delivery in the next few months and on top of this, they have 3 or 4 747-400s in storage, of which some have been brought back into service. Finally on top of this, BA operates 7 boeing 767s within europe in a shorthaul configuration, however if these are reconfigured with the new longhaul product they could be used to aid longhaul expansion, however this is much less likely. But it is still possible. In the long term BA has lots of room for expansion, with their 12 A380s and 24 787s on order currently, which are both likely to be converted into larger orders in the next few years (depending on when the world market makes a recovery and passenger travel starts to increase towards the level it was pre 2007/8).

[orudge]

Oh yes, BA certainly won't be keeping most of the bmi routes long term, I was referring to the immediate future (i.e., the next few months). I daresay there may well be schedule changes and fleet rationalisation, as you say. Will be interesting to see how things pan out. I'm just hoping the BA Executive Club may offer a status match for Diamond Club members, and that I may have a shiny BA Gold card (or even a Silver card) come the summer when I will actually be flying BA for the first time since 2007. We shall see...

[Level Crossing]

Seattle (SEA) - Chigago (ORD) - New York (LGA)
New York (EWR) - Frankfurt (FRA) - Birmingham (BHX)

How do you plan to transfer between LGA and EWR? They're pretty far apart, and there is no rail access to LGA at all.

[supermop]

Take the N train to Astoria and switch to the M60 bus, thats how I do it, but a taxi is much faster and easier.

[Level Crossing]

...M60 city bus --> the N train --> walk one block down 34 St --> NJT --> Airtrain EWR doesn't sound too appealing with luggage.

Jamie: I'd recommend these two sites.
http://www.goairlinkshuttle.com/
http://www.nyairportservice.com/

Both run shuttle services from the airports to midtown; note that only the first one goes to EWR.

[supermop]

I was assuming he'd want to spend some time enjoying the city! The M60 certainly sucks, but invariably when i get out of the Delta terminal there is a like of 400 people and no taxis. Even with bags though I don't find the walk from Herald Square to Penn Station to be bad though - I always take the F to 34th and walk rather than bother with switching to the 8th avenue line at West 4th, usually ends up quicker too. Then again, I've walked from 3rd up to 60th street without even thinking about it just because I had nowhere in particular to be, so I might not be noral in that regard. I usually walk home from Penn Station if I'm not in a hurry.

[JamieLei]

Oh! I'm staying in New York for 2 weeks to do thesis research! So no worries about that!

[GurraJG]

Oh! I'm staying in New York for 2 weeks to do thesis research! So no worries about that!

Mind if I ask what the thesis is about?