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Are three hours enough flex when switching airplanes?

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C

Czar

Lifer
I'll most likely be going to vmworld Europe in a few weeks and I'm trying to book a flight there.

One plan looks like this

From Iceland to London 09:00 12:00

From London to Nice 16:25 19:25


And the way back

Nice to London 16:20 17:25

London to Iceland 20:35 23:35


When going out there are four and a half hours of waiting which is ok if the flight is delayed an hour. But when I'll be coming back home its three hours.

Would you think its a safe bet?
 
I'd normally say 1 hour is plenty, but I am not sure what is happening with you because of international travel. I don't know enough about that and how transfers work. From the one trip to London I did make, I would assume that 1 hour is still plenty of time and 3 is overkill.
 
It at least sounds better than the other plan I have

Fly from Iceland to Paris...
Take a bus from one airport in north Paris to another one in south paris.
Fly from that Paris airport to Nice...

what a headache.
 
You should be able to stay in the international terminal in London so you should be fine. If you need to go through customs during a layover I would say you need 2-3 hours but you shouldn't have to go through customs until you get to France.
 
Just try to remember when scheduling flights with layovers that if you land at 1pm and the next flight leaves a 2pm... you don't really have an entire hour... more like 30-40 min (at least in my experience cause they board early and 2pm is technically when they would push back from the gate in order to be on time).

Oh... and if you have a short layover you will undoubtedly have to run from one end of the airport to the other. 🙂
 
I routinely catch planes with 45 minutes to an hour layover and have never had a problem. If I had a 3 hour layover when booking, I'd be looking for other options even if it got me there later.

3 hours waiting in an airport sucks.
 
Originally posted by: misle
1 hour is more than enough, IMO. I hate waiting around in airports.
Click to expand...

This.

An hour is sometimes barely enough though...a 15-20 minute delay in landing could make you miss or really scramble to get to your next flight which I also hate.
 
Keep in mind that if you have checked luggage you need some extra time. It usually takes luggage close to 2 hours to change planes. I had a connection window of 1 hour once at JFK. I barely made it, my luggage did not. Also bigger airports have multiple terminals getting between which may take close to one hour.

Another heads up international travel may make things difficult. US for example requires you go through customs and passport control even if you're connecting. That can eat up to 1 hour of your time depending on lines. France requires you go through security check for connections. I had those last anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour. Other countries make have their own oddities.

All in all 3 hours should be enough, but a delay could cause you problems. I usually make sure that my 2nd flight is *NOT* the last flight for the day. That way if you miss it the airline can just put you on the next flight that day
 
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