is 2hrs long enough?

[tspill]

Personally I prefer 4 hours so I wouldn't be booking this short a connection.
But I am very risk averse when it comes to holidays.
Missing a connection can be horrendous.
Others will be happy with 2 hours.

[YorkshireT]

2 hours is tight, especially if you get delays. You DO collect baggage, go through immigration, and if you are unlucky, queues can be big. Homeland security do not care you have an onward connection and you'll be waiting your turn. I have done this route many times. I once had two hours and had to sprint to the onward flight terminal after getting through immigration- but it was delayed anyway.
Coming back your bags go through automatically.
I have had 2 hours then as well and once the plane was delayed due to thunderstorms, then couldn't land. No immigration and literally 10 mins to departure, luckily in same terminal, I sprinted again and literally made it as they were closing the gate. Got on plane last, only for captain to tell everyone to get off, as plane fault.
I've done a lot of running in Atlanta.

[Guest]

Originally Posted by tspill

Personally I prefer 4 hours so I wouldn't be booking this short a connection.
But I am very risk averse when it comes to holidays.
Missing a connection can be horrendous.
Others will be happy with 2 hours.

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I agree, would rather spend 4 hrs at connection than risk not making the next flight and having to wait until later that night or next morning for the flight. It isn't worth the risk when you get a choice of layover.

[RickT]

If you are running late with risk of missing your connecting flight, just make your self know in the immigration queue and you will be guided to the front to speed up the process.

[mushumadness]

No it took us over two hours just to clear customs in Atlanta it was horrific

[JAL]

Originally Posted by Hawaii04

Have done this a few times and can tell you that 2 hrs is plenty of time and as said in a previous reply, you don’t need to collect baggage, they will go straight through to Orlando. You just have to clear immigration and customs at Atlanta which usually takes up to 1 hour depending on where you are in the queue.

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You do need to collect your bags if it's your point of entry as you have to clear customs. There is normally a simple bag drop straight after customs without having to check them in again.

[sam7]

We did LHR - ATL - ORL in August, it was very straightforward to transition through the airport, staff on hand at every turn to point you in the right directions. We were from plane to sitting at the departure gate waiting for the next flight in under 45 minutes. If your flight is on time arriving at ATL then 2 hours is plenty.
You do have to collect your bags to take through customs but the drop off point is straight after, so you dont have to cart them very far.

[ChrisS]

Originally Posted by Annie17

looking at flights and our layover will be 2hr 5m, is that enough time to do what we need to do? Do we have to collect our cases? The layover is in Atlanta

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Hiya Annie, may be tight; Atl self-serve kiosks became defunct in 2018 due to the introduction of facial recognition cams (no fingerprints taken), hence all pax are fully cleared by an IO. Upon our Nov arrival; cleared immigration, into luggage carousel area, collect case, short walk (?35 yards) around the corner to the left, left again, return case, walk to terminal train. I believe we needed the 4th or 5th stop for our gate to Fort Myers.

Nov 2017 our outbound VA flight was delayed, cut our layover to 90 mins. Major rush, kiosks still in use hence we made our Fort Myers flight with 5 mins to spare, crew closed the door immediately after we boarded.

Check Delta's site to see timings of later flights to MCO.

[Shani]

On our booking last October we had just over 3hr layover in Atlanta. We were delayed leaving Manchester and ended up having under an hour to connect in the end. We made it.

I think it just depends on the day how busy immigration and security is, but we were lucky and flew through.

[Susu]

Bobcat12 was asking a similar question earlier today.

We flew Manchester - Atlanta last April, then on to Tampa. We had 2.5 hours between connections which should have been plenty. Unfortunately, whilst we landed on time, four other international flights landed just before us. Over two hours queueing for immigration and we missed our connection. Put on standby for next flight by very stroppy Delta staff (stressed because they had loads of these to sort). Next flight was full. Just about got on the one after that (3 hours after original connection). The Orlando bound passengers weren’t so lucky as there was no availability on stand by until the following morning and so they were stuck in Atlanta for the night.

I would add that the year before that we did the same route with a 1.5 hr connection - which we made by the skin of our teeth (hence the longer planned connection last year).

We won’t ever risk this again. It was just too stressful for us.