Making Connecting Flights - Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport

[CoodaShooda]

My wife is planning a visit to New Zealand later this year, flying Darwin-Sydney-Auckland return with QF.

She has several alternative itineraries to choose from, with time on ground at Sydney ranging from 2 to 5 hours.

While the shortest trip time is preferable she's not sure if the 2 hour options will give her enough time to make the Domestic/International connection on the way out or the International/Customs/Domestic connection on return.

Any advice would be appreciated?

[Animalclub]

There is a minimum "legal" connecting time at SYD and QF DRW will know it. If the ticket is issued correctly and your good lady misses her connection through a QF problem - QF will look after her. She may even get looked after if it's a weather problem - if she doesn't jump up and down and does smile nicely at the Customer Service Agent:D .

No, I don't work for QF, but they have worked for me.

[Globaliser]

2 hours is adequate time in both directions if there are no delays to the inbound flight. The international->domestic connection is the one that needs more time because of clearing immigration and customs. But even so, the minimum connecting time is something like 90 minutes (needs checking with QF) and I did once manage to get on board a domestic flight that departed from the domestic terminal (now T3) 45 minutes after my international flight arrived at the international terminal.

If the entire itinerary is booked on a single ticket, then QF should look after her in terms of rebooking flights etc. if there is a delay because of a misconnection. This should include overnight accommodation if she misses the SYD-DRW on the return journey - that looks like the last flight of the day whether direct or connecting. But if she is nervous about whether accommodation would be included in the event of a misconnect, she should check that in QF's conditions of carriage for international journeys and make sure that it includes weather misconnects. (And in extremis it would always be possible that QF might go beyond what the conditions of carriage require, anyway.)

The other consideration is just how critical it is that she does not miss the connection and gets to AKL or DRW on the days that she plans to, irrespective of whether QF would look after her in the event of a misconnect. Obviously, the more critical it is, then the more time you would want to build in to the connections.