Within a hard handoff procedure of a mobile terminal from a first radio sector to a second radio sector, a handoff manager requests the allocation of network resources associated with the second radio sector for the mobile terminal. If the second radio sector does not have sufficient network resources to support the mobile terminal, the handoff manager instructs the mobile terminal to switch into a dormant mode. By doing this, the handoff manager can delay the disconnection of the packet data session until there is sufficient network resources or until an internal packet data protocol error occurs due to a request timing out. In the case that sufficient resources become available, the handoff manager instructs the mobile terminal to return to a connected mode. One advantage of this procedure is the reduced need to re-establish a data packet session in cases that there is a temporary lack of sufficient network resources during a hard handoff.