If you are flying internationally to Europe and you go through Houston, in our experience it is a nightmare. We went with Continental and were told by staff that they intentionally overbook each flight to make sure seats are filled. What seems to happen is that if they don't have enough seats, they tell people on transfer in Houston that the gate is closed when they disembark from Belize. They tell you this to stop you trying to make the flight because they don't actually have enough seats available. On our last trip through our international flight was overbooked by 40 people. We ignored them and ran to our flight with another girl on the same flight and despite having been told the gate was closed, they had not even started boarding. We asked them about the next flight that day and they told us this had been over booked too so we would have to wait until the next day to fly.

This happenned on our last trip too although we didn't ignore them and ended up stuck in the Holiday Inn over night. The Holiday Inn staff told us Continental block book two hundred rooms every night to deal with this issue as it is cheaper for them to do this than to put people on other flights.

The legal limit for connections is not in any way possible to meet for international flights at Houston. I would suggest that you insist on at least 2 hours connection time.

Also, it doesn't matter whether your luggage is checked through. If you are in transit through the USA they now make you pick up your luggage in Houston after immigration (which can take from 1-2 hours depending on the queues), go through Customs and then hand it back in again. Because of the tight connections most of the people I know from the UK have had problems with their luggage at the other end.

In addition, on this trip, we had items stolen in Houston airport while our luggage was in transit. We don't pack valuables in our check in, so all that was stolen was clothing. But it was still aggravating. We won't be going through Houston again unless absolutely necessary.

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