In January we will travel to Edinburgh. We will fly to London and get another plane to Edinburgh.I just check once again my tickets which we bought through Travelocity.com and with horror find out that we are in big troubles. We will arrive from Edinburgh to Heathrow by British Airways to terminal 1 at 12:40 pm. My flight to New York by Continental (operated by Virgin Atlantic) at 2:00 pm from terminal 3.I checked Heatrow Web site and it said it takes about 60 minutes from landing to get your departure gate. I called Continental. Agent said that most likely everything will be just fine or I can rewrite tickets on lately flight with penalty $200 per tickets. She also said that if we will try but unfortunatelly will be late Continental will put us on another 6:00 pm flight for free if seats will be available. Anyone who has experience with flight connection in Heathrow please help. othe please help

There are so many flights from EDI to LHR that one solution might be to ask how much, if any, penalty would apply by taking an earlier BA flight out of Edinburgh. My hunch is that it wouldn't be bad.

Is it possible for you to take an earlier BA flight? Hopfully that penalty will be nill or at least much less than $200 per ticket.

David, were these tickets one of those "mystery flights" at a great fare or did Travelocity issue the wrong return tickets? I don't think your flights meet the minimum connection time required in Heathrow and Travelocity should know better and be held responsible if you miss your 2pm flight. You should also make sure that BA will transfer your checked luggage to the VS flight to NY. Call Travelocity and voice your concern. You should NOT have to pay an additional $200 to take the later flight if someone sold these flights as connections. If on the other hand you selected the VS/CO NY-LHR rndtrip and LHR-EDI rndtrp separately, then you'll have to pay to get the later flight. You should resolve this before you leave the US, I think Travelocity probably goofed on this.

I agree with previous posters. Why don't you investigate leaving Edinburgh earlier? Prices for seats from EDI to LHR can be really cheap, especially on early morning flights. It may be cheaper to change your BA ticket (or buy one on BMI - http://www.fly-bmi.com - if BA have very bad penalties for changing tickets) than to change your Virgin/ Continental flight.

David -<BR><BR>For what it's worth, I flew BA to Glasgow and out of Edinbugh via Heathrow this past October. In both directions, the connection time was approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes, changing from Terminal 1 to Terminal 4 in Heathrow (or vice versa.) <BR><BR>I asked BA if this connection time was too tight because I'd seen Heathrow's website too, and was told not to worry. (In my case the entire flight was on BA, and was purchased all at once.) I made it from one terminal to the other in about 50 minutes, both times.

Just concerned that David will have to claim his luggage and recheck it as he is both changing airlines and going from a domestic flight to an international one.<BR>That would certainly eat into his window of time to make his VA flight.

David -<BR><BR>If it is the case that you will need to claim and recheck baggage, then your connection time is definitely too short. (My own bag was checked all the way through, US-Glasgow and Edinburgh-US.)

Lesie - or anyone with similiar experience: Please! Does anyone know if Virgin checks you in - all boarding passses - in Edinburgh &amp; luggage gets shipped through? Flight from Edinburgh to Heathrow would be BA/British Midland. Or could go BA -- is it correct to assume that bags would be shipped through and all boarding passes issued in Edinburgh? Or -- can book on American (their web site); they use same flight from Edinburgh -- would check in for the London-NYC leg be done in Edinburgh so lugage goes through &amp; we have boarding passes for that portion too?<BR> I am planning basically the same thing for early June &amp; haven't yet bought tickets basically because of my concern about this very issue. Edinburgh to NYC via London connection. Flying into London. <BR>Thank you David for asking. Hope you best success in resolving your problem.

If you have any hopes of making this connection, make sure you get a boarding card for your LHR-JFK leg in Edinburgh. The only time we were told just to get boarding cards in London (for a Belfast-LHR-Newark-IAD flight), we missed our connection in LHR, even though we made it to the terminal while the flight was still boarding. Thank you, Aer Lingus. Anyway, we were told that the flight to the US was considered &quot;final&quot;, and although we were physically there on time, since we didn't have boarding cards before the passenger list was finalized, we missed the flight, and had to spend the night at LHR.<BR><BR>Normally, we are given boarding cards in Belfast for each leg of our trip, but made the grand mistake of flying Aer Lingus who didn't see the need to do this.

The following is from the American Airlines website.<BR> &quot;Inter-airport baggage connection service for flights operating at London Heathrow (LHR) and London Gatwick (LGW) airports has been discontinued. Passengers connecting between American Airlines and British Airways or any other carrier will not be able to check baggage to their final destination via a connection service between these airports. <BR> <BR>Passengers are required to claim their checked baggage upon arrival in London, clear Customs with checked and hand baggage, and proceed directly to the connecting airport. &quot;<BR> It is possible that this same policy is enforced by other airlines. The only way to be sure would be to contact whatever airlines you are considering flying.<BR>

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