Triangle Trip

In response to Terminal D‘s latest post regarding minimum layover time best practices, here is a list of airports that are best for layovers:

1.  Charlotte Douglas International Airport — Aside from rain during hurricane season, Charlotte, North Carolina has decent weather so you’ll not have to be concerned about being stuck. CLT is a USAir hub with gates that are fairly close to one another. USAir does a pretty good job managing connecting flights and making sure your gates are close together. If you’re switching airlines, you do not need to go through security screening from terminal to terminal. Finally, CLT has a decent food court.

2.  Salt Lake City International Airport — Like CLT, SLC is pretty efficient where all terminals are connected. Salt Lake City doesn’t have much delays compared to Denver if you are choosing a connecting flight in the mountain region. SLC is great for Delta flights as it is their secondary hub.

3.  Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport — Although PHX is huge but weather is always on your side. You’ll never be delayed due to weather. Have ever you heard of bad weather in Phoenix? Ever? The downside to PHX is having to go from Gate A26 to B25 (see below) which is quite a walk. The trick is to look for one of the gate cart agents to give you a ride. Just tip the driver a few bucks and he’ll get you from gate to gate in a matter of minutes. PHX also has free WiFi service.

4.  Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson — Despite being one of the busiest airport in the US, I have never had any issues connecting in ATL. ATL’s terminal tram system is also fast compared to other tram systems (i.e., Denver, Houston, etc.).

5.  Las Vegas McCarran. This is probably the best place to be stuck if you missed a connection. LAS has are plenty of machines (video poker, Wheel of Fortune, etc.) to keep you busy while you wait for your connection. If you’re stuck overnight, go try your luck on the Strip. In addition, almost every major airline has a non stop flight out of LAS. So worst case scenario is for you to bring your cancelled flight ticket to another airline and beg them to let you on their plane.

For more information about our point of view on airports, here’s a list of the Top 5 Worst Airports in the US and the Top 5 Airports in America.

While the answer should be “direct flights only,” sometimes work sends us to places where we don’t have the luxury of options.  I’ve become an avid user of Hipmunk when it comes to booking complex travel, but have run across issues with what they deem to be appropriate layover windows.

While Detroit (DTW) is a perfectly fine airport and getting from gate A1 to A77 is a surprisingly easy affair when utilizing the indoor tram, getting from Concourse A to Concourse C requires no less than several sherpas and a dune buggy.  On a recent layover (connections on the same airline) I had 32 minutes to get from an A gate to a C gate.  Only for the providence of a flight delay did I make my flight.

So I have three questions for this community:

1. Can flight aggregators better predict sufficient layover times based on historical gate placement of flights?

2. What is generally the right time threshold for a layover?  45 min?

3. What airports are your personal torments when it comes to bad layovers?  (ORD, LAX and ATL are too obvious)

Since I’ve gotten the Chase MileagePlus Explorer Credit Card, my friends and colleagues have been asking me questions about the MileagePlus Explorer cards benefits.

As a business person, sometimes we can’t use our personal cards and have to use a business card.  The most popular question I get is:

Do you have to use your MileagePlus credit card when buying United tickets to obtain the benefits?

The answer is NO!

I routinely purchase my United flights with my business credit card via the United/Continental Website.   I have my MileagePlus Explorer card stored into my profile, but I change my personal card to my business card upon clicking on “Purchase.”  Since the MileagePlus Explorer card is in my profile, I still get the United MileagePlus Explorer benefits of free baggage and earlier boarding.  Unfortunately I do not get the extra points as that would be a great loophole!