SandyBrit

Hello:

Can anyone tell me how much time to allow to clear customs/immigration Chicago O'Hare Airport returning from London and board connecting flight to St. Louis, MO. Looking at booking on the current sale in progress.

Thank you.

ira

Hi SB,

Anything under 1 1/2 hr is cutting it uncomfortably close.

sfowler

Unless you are stopped by customs the immigration/customs things moves pretty fast. Baggage varies -- depending on how many flights are arriving at the same time. If there is a crowd the biggest handup I saw the last few times was the line for rechecking your baggage. After that you take the little train to Terminal 3 [I am assuming you are flying American] I would allow 2 hours as you have to go through security again in the domestic terminal and that can be slow.

JonJon

I would have to agree with two hours as a "general" timeframe. It may take less than that but I suspect you'd want to be more safe than sorry. Otherwise it may be hard to advise you since you do not say at what time of day the transfer might occur.

RachelG

It depends on several factors. If yours is the only international flight that has landed recently, it can be very fast and you have no checked luggage to wait on, it can be very fast--I would still allow 30 minutes though. If you have to wait on luggage to be claimed and rechecked and there are several other incoming flights, 2 hours.
You have control over the luggage issue, but no way to know about other flights. The place can be a madhouse at times.

Clifton

Hi Sandy,

St. Louis is our point of connection too and usually end up connecting through O'Hare. I'm guessing you're probably flying AA for at least one of these segments. As said earlier, it will probably depend on domestic traffic load and security there more than on customs. As I recall from our last trip back from London, customs was a less than 30 minutes and we had a sizeable amount of extras, gifts and such, that we had picked up in Ireland earlier.

We had to catch the tram dealie to take us over to domestic and it was a quick jump on (we timed it right). However, security lines to get back into the domestic terminal put us right at about 1:30 total. I could see it being worse on a weekday, with business travel and all.

There's a flight ORD-STL running every 2 hrs or so, so you may want to think about not squeezing the connection too tightly.

swalter518

I think alot of it depends on the time of the flight. We landed on Sunday at 7:00 pm and we're in our car by 7:45, including customs and baggage. We were the only overseas flight coming in at that time though.

Curious

SanyBrit,

Just to clarify the luggage transfer. If you are connecting from one AA flight to another, as seems likely, once you claim your baggage in Customs, AA personnel are waiting to transfer your baggage to your next AA flight. Slick.

When re-entering Terminal 3 and going through the security check, all you have to worry about is your carry-on items.

Everything seems to move pretty fast. Two hours will be plenty.

Curious

SandyBrit

Until this last week we were able to fly from St. Louis to London direct on AA. That is now history so I have no experience on booking the flight with a transfer. Please accept my sincere thanks for taking the time to reply. Your suggestions are helpful and very much appreciated.

Sandy

peck_man

The above posts are pretty accurate in that the time to get your luggage and clear customs can be widely variable depending on how many other flights are arriving when you are. Anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours is possible. I think you need to allow yourself 3 hours to catch your connection to be safe.