At Which International Airport is a 35-Minute Connection Considered Plenty of Time?

There are numerous small-town airports in the world where a connection can be easily achieved in under 35 minutes. But for the purposes of this post, let’s restrict the title question even further.

At which international airport is a 35-minute connection from an international flight considered plenty of time?

Go ahead and submit your guess in the comments section below now – and then scroll back up here and read the rest of the post.

The impetus for this question came from a post on the TripAdvisor forums by nuttyone who was aghast when he noticed that his flight from New York to Milan scheduled only 35 minutes to switch planes at the connecting airport. His initial reaction:

That’s impossible. Why even offer that? It was their flight, not from a 3rd party site. I just don’t get it, why would anyone choose that option?

After some questioning as to the location of the connecting airport, it was discovered that nuttyone was connecting in … Dusseldorf.

Dusseldorf? No problem.

Dusseldort is a smallish airport, if your flight is on time, you will make it easy..even though you will have to go through immigration. ~Tilly41

Heck, there’s an entire thread on FlyerTalk dedicated to calming travelers who are alarmed by the short Dusseldorf connection times they see on their itineraries.

Still, 35 minutes is tight and flight delays do happen. froggyEngland offers some good advice for anyone who might be worried about a tight connection:

You need to look at subsequent flights out of dusseldorf if you did encounter a delay inbound and the impact of you missing, how important is it to make this connection, or can you suffer a delay?

Read the thread in its entirety: Why would the airline offer this?

Fellow BoardingArea blogger Christopher Elliott also wrote a nice piece some time back in which he explains how the airports and airlines determine what the connection times should be that is worth a read – Do you have enough time to make your flight connection?

Comments

  1. Copenhagen is also aggressive at 45min for intercontinental transfers. And Copenhagen is an airport where you can definitely get a chance to walk some (walk from international arrivals to domestic connections is officially 31min…)

  2. I second that Copenhagen is certainly doable, although the walk is a bit long. Customs is quick, and don’t have to collect baggage (at least when flying from the US)

    Toronto on the other hand…such a mess (like most US airports I’m assuming). Need at least 2 hrs

  3. Helsinki also allows some pretty short connection times. I’ve twice had less than an hour, once less than 40 mins, and made it easily both times. Though I did miss the priority boarding call, a small quibble.

  4. On most days Schiphol…especially since if you’re late, they usually have someone there to run you past the immigration lines.

  5. While I despise the airport, did an international transfer at Berlin’s Tegal airport in 20 min

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