Have I left enough time for connections at JFK - 2 different airlines?
 

We are flying to Paris next summer via Open Skies. We are flying on AA from ORD to JFK arriving at 4:10 pm into Terminal 8 (if all goes well). The Paris flight leaves at 6:30 pm from Terminal 7. Have I left enough time to make that switch? Also, can I check our bags all the way to Paris from ORD since AA and BA are partners and Open Skies is the sub of BA?

I keep on thinking that I'm nuts to believe this connection can be done because air travel into NY never seems to run as scheduled. But AA only has one daily flight into JFK from ORD and we're on it. I am using miles for the AA portion (first class).

Cliche I know, but as long as your AA flight isn't terribly late you have plenty of time. It takes 10min to get from T8 to T7 using the AirTrain (or walking).

Is this travel booked as one ticket on 2 airlines, or 2 totally separate tickets you booked yourself. Since you are using AA miles ORD to JFK I'm assuming separate. That does expose you to some risk that if the AA flight is significantly delayed you'd miss your Paris flight, be considered a no-show, and have to buy a new ticket.

You should definitely be able to check your bags all the way from ORD to Paris, unless OpenSkies has some non-exchange policy. That wouldn't make good business sense for them, so I doubt it.

AA does have basically hourly flights from ORD to LGA. You could have booked that flight earlier in the day and taken a simple cab ride over to JFK. Unfortunately, since you're using FF miles you can't rebook to LGA instead of JFK - it's considered a different itinerary and they'd charge you a $150 rebooking fee. Tried it already.

J62 -- These are two totally separate tix. I decided not to book into LGA as I have had terrible delays in and out of there so I imagined that all my time savings could be lost with delays into there and getting between the two airports. Absent that, I'd be willing to go with the re-booking fee!

Glad to hear about checking luggage from ORD -- thanks for the info! Do you need to go back through security for a terminal change at JFK?

Did some research on Flight Stats website. The AA flight into JFK is only on time 64% of the time and is delayed on average for 84 minutes. I'm biting the bullet and switching to a much earlier flight into LGA.

In case anyone wants to use this resource for flight booking, it is:
http://www.flightstats.com/go/Flight...tusByFlight.do

Any flight can be delayed for a plethora of reasons....weather either at ORD or in NYC.....equipment problems, crew scheduling. Even if a flight has a 90% on time listing, how does anybody ever know something won't happen to THEIR flight on THAT day.

Having said that, there really shouldn't be that much of a problem. International departures in the USA are no different than domestic departures in so far as procedures are concerned. There is no passport control, just security, the same security as a domestic flight. T8 and T7 are less than 10 minutes aprt via the air train which for the most part is efficient. So everything else being equal, you should be okay but then again, what is com[pletely certain in life? You could leave the previous day and have that flight cancelled, right.....BTW if the flights are on two different tickets, I'm not sure you can check luggage through, another bit of a problem (are they paper tickets or e-tickets?)