SYD Minimum Connection Times

[Mattg]

I flew MEL-SYD a few evenings ago, and there was a couple on my flight connecting to QF3 to HNL. Their connection time in Sydney was just 60 minutes, and they had to connect using the QF Transfer bus from T3 to T1, clear immigration & security, then somehow board on time. Needless to say, they ran from the plane to the transfer bus as soon as we landed...

This made me wonder what the minimum connection time in SYD was, and I was very surprised to learn that it's just one hour for domestic-international connections. In fact, this is the first connection offered on the Qantas website for MEL-SYD-HNL:



My question is: Why on earth is the MCT so short?! There's no way I would try to connect from T3 to T1 in under an hour and expect to make the international flight. Not to mention, what happens if the inbound flight is delayed by 10-15 minutes...

 

[mmchow]

I myself was on the same situation a couple months back but on a 75 mins connection. The long queue for the bus and security had my heart pounding like crazy thinking I will miss my flight. Suppose it was a Saturday morning rush.
Imagine if you are sitting way back and have to wait for the front passengers to get off. I would literally pull my hair out!!

 

[serfty]

Hmmm ....

ISTR it being 75 minutes a couple of years ago ... even that is bad considering most international QF flights start boarding 45 minutes before scheduled departure.

 

[ozbeachbabe]

I flew MEL-SYD a few evenings ago, and there was a couple on my flight connecting to QF3 to HNL. Their connection time in Sydney was just 60 minutes, and they had to connect using the QF Transfer bus from T3 to T1, clear immigration & security, then somehow board on time. Needless to say, they ran from the plane to the transfer bus as soon as we landed...

This made me wonder what the minimum connection time in SYD was, and I was very surprised to learn that it's just one hour for domestic-international connections. In fact, this is the first connection offered on the Qantas website for MEL-SYD-HNL:

View attachment 77160

My question is: Why on earth is the MCT so short?! There's no way I would try to connect from T3 to T1 in under an hour and expect to make the international flight. Not to mention, what happens if the inbound flight is delayed by 10-15 minutes...

Can you do a multi-city booking MEL/SYD then SYD/HNL to cherry pick the flights you want?

When I did a BNE/xSYD/HNL booking last month I found that the display you get when redeeming the QF voucher (to avoid paying the cc fees) gives you a few more options than just the straight out BNE/HNL availability you see if not using the voucher. I not you've selected the 'direct flight' tab so even though there's no QF non-stop MEL/HNL I wnder if it shows the quickest option ie shortest transit time in SYD as a result.

Maybe try the departure time tab then if that doesn't work the multi-city which should still charge the $484.00 for a through fare even if initially it displays a sector fare MEL/SYD.

One hour MCT despite being legal is just crazy. If we'd had one hour MCT we would've missed our flight as firstly although the a/c was there the crew operating it were on a delayed inbound flight which pushed back our departure time. We were taxiing out for takeoff when the people in 5AB were having problems with their seat not staying upright. As the flight was chockers the CSM had nowhere else to move them to and as it was a safety issue we had to return to the gate so engineers could fix it.

Lucky they were able to fix it pretty quickly otherwise they would've had to offload 2 pax which would've been interesting. The end result was arriving in SYD at 1610 instead of 1500 however we still had 6 hours plus before the QF3 departure so no stress.

As a last result you could arrive early at MEL Airport no later than 1715 if you were hoping to be put on an earlier flight say around 1800 but if Murphy's Law kicks in and MEL is windy, you have single runway ops and a couple of cancelled flights as a result the flights could be chockers so there won't be any seats to move you to even if they wanted to.

 

[Mattg]

Can you do a multi-city booking MEL/SYD then SYD/HNL to cherry pick the flights you want?

When I did a BNE/xSYD/HNL booking last month I found that the display you get when redeeming the QF voucher (to avoid paying the cc fees) gives you a few more options than just the straight out BNE/HNL availability you see if not using the voucher. I not you've selected the 'direct flight' tab so even though there's no QF non-stop MEL/HNL I wnder if it shows the quickest option ie shortest transit time in SYD as a result.

Maybe try the departure time tab then if that doesn't work the multi-city which should still charge the $484.00 for a through fare even if initially it displays a sector fare MEL/SYD.

One hour MCT despite being legal is just crazy. If we'd had one hour MCT we would've missed our flight as firstly although the a/c was there the crew operating it were on a delayed inbound flight which pushed back our departure time. We were taxiing out for takeoff when the people in 5AB were having problems with their seat not staying upright. As the flight was chockers the CSM had nowhere else to move them to and as it was a safety issue we had to return to the gate so engineers could fix it.

Lucky they were able to fix it pretty quickly otherwise they would've had to offload 2 pax which would've been interesting. The end result was arriving in SYD at 1610 instead of 1500 however we still had 6 hours plus before the QF3 departure so no stress.

As a last result you could arrive early at MEL Airport no later than 1715 if you were hoping to be put on an earlier flight say around 1800 but if Murphy's Law kicks in and MEL is windy, you have single runway ops and a couple of cancelled flights as a result the flights could be chockers so there won't be any seats to move you to even if they wanted to.

Other flights with longer connection times are offered, thankfully, and I'm sure it would be possible to do a multi-city booking to get any MEL-SYD flight you wanted that day.

My point is more that I'm surprised this is not only allowed, but offered as the first option by default on Qantas.com. I can only imagine how many people must miss their 60 minute connections every day. It's not realistic at all.

Why does Qantas even allow this? What is the benefit to the airline of selling flights with connections that passengers are unlikely to make?

 

[JohnK]

QF does indeed offer 1 hour connections in SYD and I refuse to accept anything less than 2 hours. Remember one time on the phone the agent arguing with me/telling me a 1 hour connection was fine. No way am I risking that short a connection not when it means there is a chance I miss the international flight and have to wait until the next day for next flight.

Also the connections from BNE via SYD to SIN/HKG/BKK are all rather tight at around 90 minutes to 2 hours. If I leave on the 5:00am BNE-SYD that gets in to SYD at 7:35am and it is really pushing it to make the 9:35am SYD-BKK flight.

One thing that gets me with Qantas website is point to point bookings or return bookings not using multi city when using gift voucher. Not enough options are offered or too many options are offered with rubbish flights such as BNE-ADL-(overnight)-SYD-BKK. Now seriously why would I choose that option? The option is not cheap either. The other day I saw SYD-AVV-MEL-KUL with a ~3-4 hours connection but late at night where there is perfectly acceptable SYD-MEL QF flight available.

I ended up booking BNE-SYD-BKK return for November for very good price but on the way back there were only 3 SYD-BNE flights offered with the last SYD-BNE leaving at 12:00noon. I get it that most people don't want to stay too long but I want the 3:00pm flight SYD-BNE. Give me the option to choose. Thankfully the first person I got when calling changed it to the 3:00pm flight without asking for change fees.

 

[UP4014]

Airlines are often their own worst enemy not allowing enough time.

Was flying LAX to Syd a couple of weeks back and the 380 was loaded and ready to go, we all had to sit there on the ground for an extra hour while the passengers from NYC came across. What is QF thinking with this sort of stuff, if you're a bit slow, elderly or have mobility problems it's going to blow out and 3 people late turns into 400 people late.

 

[downgraded]

And this is why SYD can never be considered a world class airport and QF's SYD-centricity is a problem. You do have to allow 2 hours for a safe connection and that's just unreasonable for a trip to Asia.