Us air connection time in Charlotte?!?

[Fisheye]

Well, I now have the 3rd schedule change for our upcoming first trip to st John.
Us Air now has us at a 35 min window on changing planes in Charlotte on the flight home.
Is that just crazy or not? Is the Charlotte airport easy to quickly maneuver ? ( we will doing this on a sat evening) We will be arriving there from stt and heading from there to little rock
Maybe I'll be lucky and get yet another change ( favorable) before the end of July!
Do-able?

[Lindy]

It will depend on whether your planes are at the same terminal. If they're at opposite ends of the airport it might be a little hairy. Being a Saturday night might make it better since there likely won't be throngs of people to maneuver through.

[momto3boys]

Our gates in Charlotte were not in the same terminal but they were not far away either. 35 minutes would be really cutting it close though.

[jimg20]

I would ask them to look for another connection for you. That is too tight. 30 minutes is the minimum they can book.

JIM

[silverheels]

Looks like we'll be on island at the same time. We'll have to see who else will be there and try for a Beach Bar gathering.

[Capn Dan and Ruby]

Just don't go through San Juan on American! Six hours when it was suppose to be 40 min.!!! Really caused us serious problems on the STJ side and cost us a 1000 dollars. PM me if you want to know what happened!

[AquaGirl]

That is cutting it really close. If your first flight lands a bit early, you would have more cushion, but if it gets to the gate late, it would be very difficult to get to the gate in time to board. We have found that they close the gate to boarding some number of minutes before the flight time, so you don't really have 35 minute to get to the gate and board.

Even if you make it to the gate and can get on the plane, your bags might not make it onto the flight. Then you have to deal with delayed baggage on the other side. If you live close to the airport, probably not a big deal since you are going home, so you don't need your stuff.

Of course, even a longer layover doesn't guarantee that your bags will make it. In May, we took USAir from Wash DC, to Charlotte, to STT. We checked in at Wash 2 hours ahead of flight time, our bag was properly tagged and had a 3.5 hour layover in CLT. Our checked bag went to Phoenix instead of STT! We didn't get it until the evening of the next day. It restricted what we could do our first day on STJ, since we were dealing with "where is our bag, and how is it going to get to STJ".

[petepie]

At least you're going home. We got stuck in Charlotte on the way down and couldn't get to STT until the next day. Never again through Charlotte for me, although there are many others on this board who have had no problems.

Are there any other flights later in the day that you can take in case you miss the connection? And are they pretty crowded? How upset would you be if you missed your connection? If there is only one flight per day to your destination and/or you would be really distraught to miss it, I would rebook to another flight.