I would seek advice on whether the original transit time of 90 minutes was sufficient. As far as I understand the system it has to be sufficient as the carrier can otherwise not put such a trip together.

If that can be proven you have a good chance for compensation.

Also, what fare class was the ticket?

Mark

Have a look at this link covering mct's. One and a half hours at Chicago would appear to be ok.

http://airtravel.about.com/od/airports/a/minimumconnect.htm

United did say an hour and a half was their legal MCT - but it honestly wasn't long enough! How can I challenge this?

Who are you going to challenge on this? It is quite possible that 90 minutes is ample time, but that also assumes that customs have not decided to go slow or there is a security alert. My youngest son travels to San Francisco on a regular basis. He tells me that the time taken both in and out vary tremendously for no obvious reason. Whilst not very satisfactory I doubt there is much you can do but contact the airline customer service and ask the question.

fwh

Hi
I think you'll probably not get any different advice than the post you put up on moneysavingexpert.

Definitely try the 'travel agent should have left more time between flights' route.

Best of luck.

Whilst I am very sympathetic to the situation you found yourselves in, I think that you will find that you have to accept that Customs have important work to do, and are required to give the time their officers need to do their jobs correctly. It must be very frustrating to see so few officers at work, especially as you are under pressure of time for your connecting flight. But all customs officers also work to legal requirements including break periods during their working day - after all they have to concentrate hard on many and diverse passengers arriving in large numbers at a time - and those in the US are under particular pressure considering the 'popularity' of their country for clandestine activities.

All passengers risk being delayed at Immigration and Customs for no fault of their own, and for no fault of those doing labour-intensive and responsible procedures to keep their country and its inhabitants safe.

Of course we all want to move on as fast as possible, even if we have nothing to declare etc, but everyone has to be checked; after all, not all smugglers or contrabandiers have a bubble saying ' I'm the one, check me' flying over their heads.

This was an unfortunate situation - and even allowing for the fact that the minimum connecting interval between plane a and plane b is x minutes, that still cannot take into account variables like staff shortage, delayed arrival times or officers of that country doing their job.

I'm sorry that you had a flight delay, but I would think that it is unlikely that you would be awarded financial compensation as this type of delay, albeit possibly more frequent than one might like, is probably inevitable, and cannot be prepared for ............ without adding extra time to the minimum connecting interval as a matter of course.