I booked a flight from LHR to MEL with an hour 15 minute stopover in AUH. Iexpected the airline would allow enough time to transfer but I needed to run to my next plane - is this normal?
I booked with the airline directly and selected flights from London Heathrow to Melbourne, Australia. The stop over was 1hr 15m in Abu Dhabi and I figured that since the airline was suggesting this stopover it would be enough time to transfer to the next flight but I ended up running for my next flight.
The flight was delayed by 30m but seemed to make up that time. I was a little bit worried so I checked my boarding pass on my phone and it said the boarding time was 1:10am and yet we were arriving at 1:15am. I asked the flight attendant if I need to worry about my connecting flight and she said she isn't sure due to the flight arriving after the boarding starts. It took a long time for the plane to deboard and once I'd finally made it to the transfers area there was a massive line for security. Thankfully it moved fairly quickly. When I was finished with security I heard the PA say last call for my flight so I RAN.
Exactly the same thing happened on the way back. I heard a couple asking the flight attendant who reassured them that the connecting flight would wait for them but I also overheard conversations from other passengers saying they had missed their flights as they weren't able to make it to the next flight in time and had to wait for the next flight.
I've spoken to other people who have booked similar flights with other airlines and they have had a slightly longer stopover or just not had this issue. My question for more experienced travellers, is this normal? And what can I do to decrease the chances of this happening again. This experience has completely put me off every flying with the airline again.