I Had Just 8 Minutes To Change Terminals In Dallas — The American Airlines Trick That Got Me Home

I flew up to DC on Southwest Airlines this week, but took American back. Southwest has (by law) the only non-stop flight from Austin to close-in National airport. Since it’s a 1,311-mile flight that’s over the 1,250-mile ‘perimeter’ flying limit from the airport, and so only specifically-granted exception flights can operate on the route.

Normally the 1 p.m. departure time from Austin doesn’t work for me with Southwest, but I recorded the Central Air podcast before heading to the airport.

For the return, I took a connecting flight back on American instead of the Southwest non-stop. I was able to leave earlier in the day, and it meant (if everything operated on schedule) I’d make it home for my daughter’s bedtime.

Since I barely made my connection, and a couple of things I did along the way always surprise people, I thought it made sense to share the choices I made that helped me get onto my original connection – and also to ensure I had space on a backup flight home that night in case I didn’t.

On the way out of D.C. I had some breakfast at Capital One Landing before my flight. Their cream-filled pastries are absolutely out of this world fantastic. There were three choices, and I was a little bit disappointed that they didn’t have the crema catalana, but they’re still good enough that I had two of them anyway (well, I actually ate one and a half).

I wasn’t really hungry after this, but on board I did take the cheese plate – I still need to also try the new Inflight Bites Box and the new sandwich that starts next month. It’s not crave-worthy for sure, but I thought that the cheese quality was better and certainly tastier.

Tillamook® Extra Sharp Cheddar, Tillamook® Smoked Black Pepper Cheddar and blueberry artigiano cheese. Fresh fruit, dried apricots and dried black figs. Walnuts, gourmet crackers, Bonne Maman honey and Toblerone chocolate

My flight from D.C. to Dallas pushed back 9 minutes early. Despite this, we didn’t get in the air for about an hour. And we were already looking at a longer than normal flight time because of significant headwinds enroute.

We were too heavy to take advantage of the shorter runway. Because of the direction of the winds the airport shifted the direction of takeoffs from primary runway 1/19, and it took awhile to taxi to the other end of the airport as they flipped operations.

All the while I was watching my connecting time in Dallas shrink. At one point we were slated to land in Dallas at the exact same time as my connection to Austin was scheduled to depart, although this bounced around quite a lot.

So while we were onboard, I sent a direct message to the @AmericanAir twitter team asking for a backup flight to Austin to be added to my itinerary.

• I did not want to move off of my original connection. I still wanted the ability to try to make that flight. Making it would mean being home before my daughter went to sleep.

• But I also wanted to make sure I’d get home the same night if I didn’t make that connection. There were only a few seats left on later Dallas – Austin flights. Those could be gone if I waited.

• Onboard I can’t just call American’s customer service, but I have found American’s Twitter team better with working on reservations than any other airline.

Adding flights to a reservation without giving up the flight you’re on is something that American will do at least for Executive Platinum (and ConciergeKey) members. They let you have ‘duplicate’ bookings without cancelling one out.

If you wind up needing the backup flight, you need to have the ticket reissued for it later. If you don’t need it, and there’s time, it’s polite to cancel out the space.

Things were looking pretty good. At one point we gained enough time that we were showing a gate arrival that would give me 33 minutes between flights in Dallas.

• At 15 minutes out, American can give away your seat to standby customers if you haven’t made it to the gate area. It looked like at least a mostly full flight, so there was a good chance that would be happening. So I needed to get there 15 minutes out, not just 10 minutes (doors close).

• And we were arriving at gate A37 in Dallas. My connecting flight to Austin was slated to leave from D40. That takes time.

It took a few minutes longer to get on the ground than the captain had predicted. My connection was already boarding. We didn’t have a super long taxi time, but when we arrived at the gate the alley was blocked and had to wait for an aircraft to move. We ultimately blocked in at 25 minutes to departure of my connection to Austin. Doors opened quickly and I had 8 minutes to get from A37 to D40.

Now, the usual way to get between terminals in Dallas is the Skylink. I was a bit worried about taking that because it had been under scheduled maintenance that was supposed to end about 3 hours earlier. Both A37 and D40 are good walks from Skylink stations, too. So this wouldn’t be fast.

But the terminals are also connected by walkways. A37 is very close to the walkway over to C2. And the C2 walkway is connected to the walkway over to D – that dumps you off right at D40! So I was definitely going to hoof it over to my connecting gate. I figured that gate-to-gate Skylink would be about 10 minutes (with greater variability risk) while walking should take about 7.

I was a bit demoralized to hit the A-to-C connector and see the moving walkway out of service! But forunately it was just one of them, the rest were working, which helped speed up my brisk pace.

I was in the C-D connector when I heard last call for my flight announced. It took me the exact 7 minutes I’d predicted, so I turned up at the gate at D-16, and saw several passengers huddled by the gate waiting to get on as standbys.

I made the connection. The flight pushed a minute early. I made it home, walking in the door about 15 minutes before my daughter’s bedtime even. If I didn’t, I’d have been home an hour later because of my backup flight and wouldn’t have gotten stuck in Dallas overnight.

At DFW it’s worth knowing or looking up where your gates are located before deciding how you’re going to change terminals. The Skylink isn’t always faster, and I might not have made it to my connection before losing my seat if I’d taken it.

And for top American AAdvantage status members, it’s worth knowing that they’ll add a segment to your reservation during even potential irregular operations. That’s saved me many times, and is probably the thing I still value the most about Executive Platinum