The Essentials

Why You Should Double Your Connecting Flight Time in 2021

In the days of pre-pandemic travel, a majority of us flew — at least within the United States — on connecting flights.

And my rule then was to never schedule flights that had less than a 90-minute connect time between them. Flights were almost always full, and if your first flight was late and you missed your original connecting flight, you might be waiting very long to make that next connection, if that or subsequent flights were already full.

As you begin to prepare for your 2021 flights, that rule is more important than ever.

And beware because as airlines begin to post their new schedules, they have no idea what their passenger loads will be because historical data is essentially irrelevant in the era of COVID-19. It’s like starting from scratch, and what that means is they are much more likely to cancel flights as you get closer to your departure date.

This is all the more reason to double your connect time — from 90 minutes to 180 minutes — just to protect yourself.

This way, should your original flight not cancel or be delayed, you might be able to fly standby on an earlier connecting flight. But either way, you stand a better chance of getting to where you wanted to go.