Minimum Layover Time at LHR

[jpapadou]

Looking for book a flight from ATH to YVR next summer (2023). I’d like to book the same itinerary I’ve flown 4 times in the past:
BA639 (13:30-15:25) & BA85 (17:20-18:55). For some reason, when I try creating a mock itienrary, the system says it can’t book online and should phone to book. Layover is 1 hour, 55 minutes. Anyone have any idea why?

By way of comparison, when I pick the earlier flight out of ATH, BA623 (09:30-11:25), I can book online.

Would appreciate thoughts/advice.

Thanks in advance.

[ChrisC]

Minimum Connection Times for LHR are

T5-T5 – 60 Minutes
T3-T3 – 70 Minutes
T5-T3 – 90 Minutes (and same for T3-T5.

So whichever terminals are involved your 1hr 55 exceeds those MCTs so shouldn’t be a problem to book

Are you doing this as a single or multi city search? That’s all I can think of other than it being a hic up amd somethhing not being linked because it’s close to the end of the current booking window.

[jpapadou]

Thanks @ChrisC

I’ve tried booking as a single and multi-city search. When I select ATH-YVR with no layover, the system doesn’t offer the BA639-BA85 combo at all! When I select ATH-YVR with layover, I can then see all the flights available for each leg. I too think it’s a coding/logic error and dread having to phone in…

In fact, I think they’ve coded it to deny iteneraries with less than 2 hours layover at LHR, perhaps based on the chaos this year. But just my opinion.

[Stu_N]

It’s quite annoying – but it’s not a new thing as there’s always been a 2 hour minimum layover coded into the multi-city tool so if you input ATH-LHR then LHR-YVR it will only show flights with that gap.