A traveler’s missed connection in Lima reveals long customs lines, confusing baggage recheck, and frustrating LATAM rebooking rules that led to a three-hour delay.
It’s fun flying airlines I don’t frequently fly, just to see how they’re different. I’m an airline nerd who worked in the airline industry for decades, and I love discovering the minor differences between airlines, like which airlines request passengers raise window shades for landing and which don’t, or which airlines mercifully spare us all the in-flight announcements about “exciting opportunities” to apply for credit cards.
I run into my share of messes, too. While they’re frustrating in the moment, it’s more interesting to peel back the layers after the fact.
Earlier this week, I flew from Dallas to Cusco, Peru on Delta Air Lines and their partner LATAM Airlines. My flight from Dallas to Atlanta was operated by Delta, and the remaining onward flights from Atlanta to Lima and Lima to Cusco were operated by LATAM Perú, with a Delta flight number.
Everything clicked right along until I got to Lima. My overnight flight from Atlanta arrived on time (a few minutes early, in fact) and I thankfully had a seat near the front of the aircraft, so I was one of the first off toward customs.
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That’s where everything fell apart. The queues in the customs halls were enormous. And that’s not something I can particularly fault anybody for. Screening travelers coming into your country is something you want to do thoroughly. But all told, it took an hour and fifteen minutes to get through the line.
I collected my checked bag, which was waiting for me, and the agent directed me upstairs to the LATAM ticket counter to re-check my bag. Unlike many other international airports, the Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima doesn’t have a dedicated baggage re-check area before the customs exit, so passengers connecting to domestic flights must enter the same travel flow as any other passenger arriving for a domestic flight.
Upon reaching the LATAM ticket counter, the bag drop line was massive, but the agent checking boarding passes at the podium saw that my domestic ticket was in Premium Economy, so they directed me to the Premium Economy check-in counters. LATAM doesn’t maintain a bag drop-only line for Premium Economy passengers, so I joined a line about five passengers deep to wait to check in. And wait, I did, for all the passengers at the ticket counter seemed to be originating a home mortgage instead of checking in for a domestic flight. I arrived in the line at around 6:15 and didn’t get to an agent until 6:30 (for a 7:05 scheduled departure). I already began to suspect I had missed the cutoff (it’s 30-45 minutes for U.S. domestic flights, airlines in many other countries tend to have longer cutoffs).
The agent informed me that I had missed the cutoff for checking my bag, so we’d have to go on the next flight. Ok, I get it, things happen. Let’s book the next flight. The agent said they couldn’t book me on a new flight until the flight I was currently on—the flight we both knew I wouldn’t be taking—had departed without me. Come back at 7:05, they said. They were pleasant about it, but that was a first for me. It’s pretty standard practice at airlines around the world that if you’re not going to make the flight you booked, you get put on the next one (either standby or confirmed, depending on what each airline’s policy is).
I went and came back, and it took 45 minutes to rebook me onto a later departure. The agents explained they needed to get authorization to book another seat on the flight to Cusco. The authorization part made sense (Cusco is a high-altitude airport with operational restrictions) but the fact that it took so long was an added frustration. The Lima-Cusco market is a key one for LATAM Perú, and passengers need rebooking after missing flights every day.
I ultimately got to Cusco three hours late, and frustrated, because LATAM recommends 95 minutes for an International-Domestic connection at Lima, and I had 125.
So, what went wrong, aside from the atrocious Customs line?
I contacted LATAM Péru’s press office for some clarifications.
A LATAM spokesperson confirmed that there wasn’t a baggage re-check at LIM within the international arrivals area. They also let me know they do have dedicated counters for passengers making connections, which I must have missed (the two agents to whom I showed my boarding card might also have mentioned it). “While LATAM has implemented dedicated connection counters (located in the check-in lobby area) and support teams to assist, we recognize that this setup is not as seamless as in other international hubs where recheck belts are available immediately after customs,” said the spokesperson.
The other burning question I had was why I couldn’t immediately be rebooked. At most airlines, a flight goes into “gate control” mode at a pre-determined time prior to departure (typically when the ticket counter cuts off check-in for the flight, a half hour to an hour prior to departure, depending on the airline’s internal rules, and sometimes on local government or airport regulation). Up until that point, there are a lot of “hands” on the inventory for the flight. Passengers can book seats and check bags with agents at the counter, gate, or reservations center, at a kiosk, online, or on the airline’s mobile app. Gate Control mode shuts all that down, so that only agents at the departure gate can make further changes. This is to allow operations staff to start planning the weight and balance for the flight without all the “hands” making changes while they’re doing it.
The exception, at most other airlines, is cancellations. You can’t add passengers or bags to a flight in gate control mode, but you can take them off. Some airlines are a bit more restrictive in this, and it might require a phone call to the gate or to a designated control agent to offload a checked-in passenger. Most airlines recognize the need to immediately rebook a passenger who won’t make the flight (because they’re frustrated and need resolution). LATAM is an outlier here.
Explains the spokesperson, “In the case of LATAM at [Lima], once the flight is closed in the system, the process is more restrictive. Final passenger data is transmitted for weight and balance calculations, and subsequent modifications are operationally limited. While offloads may still occur at the gate for no-show passengers, these are handled under a different operational process and timing, and are not always reversible at the check-in level once closure has been executed.”
Here’s where I noted the logical fallacy. They’re basically telling customers, “We can’t take you off the flight because of weight and balance, but we know you won’t be on the flight, so the weight and balance is going to be wrong—until we take you off later, when it’s more convenient for us.”
LATAM responded that they “understand [my] point regarding the apparent inconsistency, and it is a fair observation. The current process prioritizes procedural integrity at closure, even if adjustments may still occur later in the operation.” In short, “procedural integrity” trumps passenger convenience.
And I can appreciate that—to a point. Plenty of airline policies, like cutoffs for checking bags, and arriving at the gate are precisely about procedural integrity—procedures that make flights operate safely and on time. But airlines also compete for business on quality of service, and I maintain that in comparison with other airlines, LATAM has room for improvement here.
So how can a repeat of this situation be avoided? I know now that I probably need more than LATAM’s suggested 95 minutes for an international-to-domestic connection at Lima, and their spokesperson agreed. “Your experience highlights an important consideration. While your connection time was within the legal minimum, actual processing times at immigration and customs can vary significantly depending on arrival banks. For passengers traveling with checked baggage and connecting from international to domestic flights at [Lima], we would recommend allowing additional buffer time where possible, particularly during peak morning arrival periods.”
I have a further suggestion there, too. Airline reservations systems are pretty sophisticated, and they can program Minimum Connection Times (MCTs) pretty specifically. Say you recommend 95 minutes for an International-to-Domestic (I-D) connection at Lima, but you know that it’s really more like 180 minutes during certain peak periods. You can actually program your reservations systems to account for that, based on the arrival and departure times of the flights.
In the bigger picture, my arriving three hours later in Cusco is a minor frustration, and I appreciate LATAM’s quick, thorough responses and openness to feedback.