YourBestFlight › Will I make my connecting flight?
Will I make my connecting flight?
The layover printed on your boarding pass is not the number that matters. What matters is how much real time you'll have on the ground once your first flight actually lands.
The layover number lies during a delay
A "90‑minute connection" sounds comfortable. But if your inbound is 35 minutes late, arrives at a far terminal, and boarding for your next flight closes 15 minutes before departure, that 90 minutes can quietly become 10 usable minutes across a terminal change. The schedule won't tell you that; the live aircraft and the airport layout will.
Connecting at Newark (EWR), Terminal C → Terminal A. Published, your inbound lands at 6:40 PM with a 7:35 PM onward — 55 minutes. But the inbound aircraft is running late, so it really arrives about 7:05 PM. Boarding for the 7:35 closes at 7:20. After a C‑to‑A transfer, you'd reach the gate around 7:22 — two minutes after the doors close.
| Published | Adjusted (realistic) | |
|---|---|---|
| Inbound arrives | 6:40 PM | 7:05 PM |
| Usable ground time | 55 min | ~15 min to a boarding cutoff across terminals |
Likely to miss. Worth holding a later backup on the same route before you take off.
How YourBestFlight reaches a different result
- It tracks the live position of your inbound aircraft and how late it's really running.
- It uses the airport‑specific connection time, terminal transfer, boarding cutoff and walking buffer — not a generic "minimum" — to compute the ground time you truly have.
- If the connection is tight, it surfaces the best backup flight so you're not improvising at the gate.
Check your connection
Enter your first flight and we'll read its live inbound status, then estimate whether you'll make the connection — and the best backup if it's close.
Free · no account Your inbound flight's live status and map — no charge to check.
Decision support only — always confirm times and gates with your airline before you rely on them. Connection buffers vary by airport and airline.