Help with Airline Connections
 

I need help from experienced travelers -

We just booked some tickets to Italy because the price was too good to pass up, but now I'm worried about the connection time.
Here's the itinerary -

Thursday, June 11, 2009

San Francisco International (SFO) to Chicago O'Hare International (ORD)
Departure: (SFO): June 11, 8:50 AM PDT (morning)
Arrival: (ORD): June 11, 2:54 PM CDT (afternoon)
Class: Economy

Thursday, June 11, 2009
Air One # 21

Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) to Milan Malpensa (MXP)
Departure: (ORD): June 11, 4:55 PM CDT (afternoon)
Arrival: (MXP): June 12, 8:35 AM CEST (morning)
Class: Economy

With the change in airline - do we have enough time to make this flight?

If I am not mistaken you are flying on UA all the way, thus changing planes, not airlines.
You should have enough time if your first flight is on time (a big if these days).
You can check out the ontime history of that flight on :
http://www.bts.gov/xml/ontimesummary...maryFlightData
Here your flight has an ontime performance 80% of the time.

This site is even better - it breaks down the average and shortest/longest delays:
http://www.flightstats.com/go/Flight...tingByRoute.do
Here the average delay for this flight is 35 minutes - so you should be OK.
Good luck

First, you can be absolutely certain that the schedule will change between now and June '09. I guarantee it. So, it really doesn't much matter whether the current times are sufficient.

What <i>does</i> matter is whether the trip is on a single ticket or two separate tickets (one between SFO and ORD, and the second between ORD and Milan). If you are buying a single ticket, then you are OK: when the flight times change, you will either have enough time to make the connection or you will be able to change flights to make a safe connection. If you have two separate tickets, though, you are taking a great risk: the schedules might change so that you have insufficient time to make the connection, and you would have little or no leverage to change flights.

ditto rizzuto's reply.

I see the itinerary on united dot bom:
SFO-ORD is United 134
ORD-MXP is United 9458 operated by Air One

OP's other thread on this - on the Europe forum - has all the info.