A new airport-by-airport study puts hard numbers on a feeling every seasoned traveller already has: some connections are a stroll, others are a sprint. Knowing which is which before you book can save a trip.
There’s a particular kind of dread that sets in when a connection is tight and the gate map is unfamiliar. A new analysis by Upgraded Points puts numbers behind that instinct, scoring 25 of the country’s busiest airports on how much time a layover really needs — and the gap between the best and worst performers is bigger than most flyers assume.
The study weighed 14 factors across the airports, including size, gate count, passenger volume, on-time departure performance, and walking distances between terminals, then converted that into a recommended cushion for each one. The results, published by Upgraded Points, confirm what frequent flyers have long suspected about a handful of mega-hubs, while flagging a few surprises further down the list.
According to the Upgraded Points study, Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental topped the list at two hours and seventeen minutes, with Dallas Fort Worth close behind at two hours sixteen, and JFK rounding out the top three at just over two hours. Atlanta, Denver and Chicago O’Hare followed in the one-hour-fifty-plus range, with Charlotte, LAX, Las Vegas and Newark completing the ten airports where travellers should build in the most breathing room.
The size and reach of Houston and Dallas explain much of why they lead the pack — both are sprawling hubs with heavy traffic and the kind of terminal distances that can turn a routine connection into a genuine scramble.
At the other end of the scale, the ease of connecting through smaller, more contained airports stands out. Per the same research, Washington’s Reagan National required the least cushion of any airport studied at just fifty minutes, with Chicago Midway and Dallas Love Field not far behind at under an hour each.
Honolulu, Detroit, Minneapolis-St Paul and Baltimore-Washington rounded out the next tier, each comfortably under ninety minutes. It’s a useful reminder that airport size and airline hub status don’t always track together — Reagan National handles serious traffic without the labyrinthine terminal sprawl of its larger cousins.
For the traveller who has earned the right to a few hours back rather than spent racing through Concourse E, this is information worth building into the itinerary, not just the day of travel. A connection through Houston or Dallas Fort Worth on a tight schedule invites exactly the kind of stress a long-haul trip shouldn’t carry — particularly with checked bags, a transatlantic leg on either side, or simply less patience for sprinting than there once was.
Where the routing allows a choice between hubs, the data — from Upgraded Points’ analysis — offers a genuine edge: book the connection that suits the pace you actually want to travel at, not the one a search engine happened to surface first.
Amanda O’Brien is the creator and editor of The Boutique Adventurer. She has visited 80 countries and is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers as well as the IFTWTA. She is passionate about wine had has just completed Level 3 of the WSET. Born in Australia, she lives in London.