Transfer time in New York - worried! Experiences please

[Disney Posse]

Hi Everyone

So we finally have one of our bucket list cruises booked - its a week around the southern Caribbean visiting 6 islands that we want to visit - we are flying into San Juan from Manchester via New York. Going to be a long old journey for a week away but its got to be done.

Question is - we fly from Manchester to New York with Virgin and then switch to Delta for our onward journey to San Juan.

We only have an hour and a half to disembark and get on to our next flight - seems very tight timewise?

any experiences please?

[Guest]

That does seem quite tight to me I am afraid. Is it a through ticket and have there been any flight time changes since you booked it? How much gap have you got at the other end between landing and embarkation?

[Guest]

Also, when you say 1.5 hours do you mean from touchdown to take off. In which case yes too tight in my view. If from touchdown to gates close for boarding that it still really quite tight !

[Melbatb]

You still have to go through immigration at NYC. Which airport are you going through?

[Disney Posse]

We're going through JFK - bought the holiday as a package... Stay overnight in San Juan before boarding the cruise

[Disney Posse]

Shall contact the agency to check - must admit when I booked the tickets I didnt realise it was such a quick turn around - unless of course they have arrangements to go through a transfer gate?

[Melbatb]

Originally Posted by Disney Posse

Shall contact the agency to check - must admit when I booked the tickets I didnt realise it was such a quick turn around - unless of course they have arrangements to go through a transfer gate?

See more...

We have flown through JFK on the way to Canada.

We had to go through immigration and then pick up our bags, give the bags back once through customs and then back through to the gate. We didn’t have to change terminal. We did it in about 1.5h but we were fairly lucky with the queues. Are there any flights after yours to your destination?

[Guest]

I think San Juan is counted as domestic from jfk so that would mean going through immigration and customs and potentially reclearing security.

I don't know if going from man too San Juan via JFK is counted as international to international. That may mean there is a transfer gate so you don't have to go landside, but given comments from pp ^ would indicate not.

If you have a night in San Juan before embarking that does give a bit more leeway

Good luck with travel agent.

[familybell]

We flew virgin from Gatwick to jfk in October and were waiting in immigration for over 2 hours, the previous Oct were were delta Edi to mco via jfk and were through immigration in no time atall and easily made the connection - personally I’d see if I could be moved onto a later connection if possible

[MinniMouse]

Oh that's tight. We flew Delta Edi to MCO via JFK last summer. We chose a longer transfer time, just as well as it took us over 2 hours to get through immigration and pick our cases up. The hall was full when we arrived then another flight came in and we seemed to get unlucky with every queue we were put to, from the machines that scan your fingerprints and take your photo to then waiting in line to see the officers. It took such a long time and when we eventually got through to the baggage claim they were taking the last few cases (inc ours) off the belt for the next flight!