koryandleslie

First let me say that yes, Continental Airlines will do this for me, but the price I am getting is about $90 p/p higher, if booked with them. I can do 2 separate tickets cheaper. Since there are 5 of us, that's $450. Give me your ideas

There is a flight on Continental non-stop from Houston to Seattle. It gets into Seattle at 10:11am. We would get off the flight, go get our luggage and get checked in for an Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to Fairbanks that leaves at 12:43p. So it gives us 10:11a to 12:43p to get off and get back on. Can we do this????

mclaurie

Are you saying you can buy this all on one ticket from Continental for the same flights? If yes, I guess you realize if the first flight is delayed and it's all on 1 ticket you lose no $$$. On 2 separate tickets if you miss the 2nd flight, you're scre***ed.

I'd find out what the ontime performance of the first flight is historically and how far apart the 2 airlines are in the airport.

Gretchen

What McLaurie said. CO has a good ontime record but anything can happen at any time.

koryandleslie

I've gone to CO web-site but can't find anything about on-time performance. Can someone help with that?

suze

I see a couple potential problems...

When you buy 2 separate tickets the connecting airline has no responsibility for the rest of your itinerary. If the Continental flight is an hour late due to weather or delay in landing for whatever reason... Alaska Air owes you nothing because to them you have simply missed your flight (that's 5 tickets you'd be out!).

To figure out the logistics at SeaTac (I replied to your other post) we would need to know which gates or terminal Continental uses, and which Alaska will fly out of. Then figure in a time for a trip to baggage claim, and having to go back thru security check lineup for the next flight.

To my mind it is money well spent to have both flights on the same airline, plus then they would transfer your luggage, and you could eliminate dealing with baggage claim and rechecking your suitcase, as well as staying within areas to avoid having to do another security check.

It always takes me at least an hour to get off the plane, walk to baggage claim, wait for the luggage, and exit the airport at SeaTac... so I think your plan is cutting it WAY too close.

tracys2cents

Have you tried booking the whole think at alaskaairlines.com? since doing it this way, they put you on Continental to start...I assume they would take care of any problems at connection time.


Morning flights have the best on-time arrival averages of all and I don't think you'd have any problem anyway. Is it morning flights on the return trip as well?

rkkwan

You can check your bags through. I am sure CO and AS have interline baggage agreement.

But what others say about missing the connection is true.

Couple other things you can try to put the two flights on the same ticket, but may give you the lower cost:

1. Try Orbitz. See what price they give you. You do have to pay $5 more, at least.

2. Hold just the CO flight on continental.com. [You have until midnight the following day to ticket them.] Then call the continental.com website support desk, (800)300-1547 - not general reservations - to have them price the AS flights in AS code, not CO codeshare. See what the price is. You can then go back to continental.com to finish the transaction.

You may get the lower fares, and this way you're protected.

joan

As rkkwan said, try Orbitz. They'll do it all on one ticket - just find the combination by doing a search. I've done it this way several times, even once when Orbitz went to bat for me to change things around when one airline cancelled its flight.

highbay

I booked two seperate airlines to get us from Tampa to Ireland last November. I was lucky that Aerlingus messed up by not notifying us of flight changes. As a result, we arrived in BMI, to find that they had no flight leaving on a Wednesday. That left Aerlingus scrambling to get a connection to Ireland.

Would never do this again. Not worth the worry.

suze

Hopefully you've figured this out by now? If you do decide to fly with the original plan *definitely* look into having your luggage transfered between the two airlines/flights for you. For you to have to pick it up at baggage claim yourself & recheck it in Seattle is not a reasonable or necessarly (I'm pretty sure) plan.

rkkwan

Anyways, back to another question in the original post...

I looked up the DOT stats for CO167. It has 77 flights on record till 6/30/05. 60 of them arrive ontime (within 15 minutes). The other 17 (28.33%) were delayed an average of 29.76 minutes.

This is an early flight out of IAH, probably the first flight for the plane that day. Really shouldn't be delayed.

So, I'll say it's a pretty reliable flight, especially when you have 2.5 hours for the connection. CO also doesn't cancel their flights often, except under extraordinary situations. During the past years, they only cancel about 0.4% of their flights, compared to 2% for some carriers.

crazy4Hawaii

I recently took American Airlines from Little Rock to Seattle and then Alaskan Airlines from Seattle to Ketchikan. American booked my luggage all the way through so I didn't have to worry about that. I made sure there was a two hour layover - as you have - and experienced no problems at all.