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Being my first time organising a trip (going in a few months), and since I couldn't manage to fit it in one intiniery, I bought tickets on two intinieries.

Now the issue is I've only have 80mins to transfer in SCL from an international to domestic flight. Which I figured it's basically impossible to make since

  • Flight can be late usually around 10mins (looked at the flight history)
  • Deplaning
  • Going through customs/immigration
  • Getting my luggage
  • Checking in again

Checkin closes 30mins before so that leaves me 50mins to sort everythihng.

I'm thinking of just cancelling it (won't get any money back). I looked at LAN chile site and prices are like $200 for a return (much cheaper than buying from one of their international sites), I'm thinking it would be better to pay the 200 dollars and get myself on a flight that I have a chance to make.

But not sure what to do, how do you guys rate my chances? I need some direction because I'm not sure what to do at this point in time.

Ari Brodsky
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Peter Bryan
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1 Answers1

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I've flown to SCL airport only once (March 2014), so my answer is not based on vast experience, but it took me over 45 minutes to get my luggage and leave the airport after the security check. If you're arriving with an international flight, the Chilean customs are very restrictive about what you can bring into the country and everybody's luggages and bags are checked thoroughly, which causes unimaginable queues and lots of waiting time. If that was not a temporary thing, so assuming that they're still imposing these security checks, and you really need to pick up your luggage and enter the country, which is the only way you can catch a separately bought domestic flight, then I'm sorry to say that there is no way you can make it in 50 minutes, even if your previous flight is not late. On top of that, if you're going to check in luggage for the second flight as well, the baggage drop closes before the final check in time, it's usually around 45 minutes before the flight in European airports, but you have to check for this separately.

If you have a decent travel insurance, they would pay for the second flight that you 'missed'. Although you can look for answers online and realize that it's not very likely to catch this second flight, legally speaking 80 minutes is a pretty long time to make a connection and they would be obliged to pay you for the money you've lost due to these customs that I've mentioned, as well as any non-refundable accommodation bookings you've made for the destination in question.

I hope this helps, Santiago is beautiful, enjoy your journey.

downhand
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