dinks

My wife and I will be visiting Europe this September.
We will be flying from France to Santorini via Athens where we will be changing airlines.
The last connecting flight from Athens to Santorini leaves at around 6:30 PM. Our flight from France arrives in Athens at around 5:20 PM.
Given the ease of travel within EU countries does anyone know if this is sufficient time for us to catch the connecting flight? I would prefer to not have to spend a night in Athens.
Can our luggage be checked thru to Santorini even though the flights are on 2 different carriers?
Thanks.

Doh

I think minimum connection time in Athens is 45 minutes, so that seems reasonable, especially if you do not need to get luggage. Whether your luggage can be checked through depends on whether the airlines have an interline agreement, so we would need to know the specific airlines. I think the airport hotel is decent if you do happen to miss it...

dinks

Hi Doh.

The airlines are Air France and Aegean or Olympic.

We have not yet purchased the connecting flight from Athens to Santorini.

Thanks.

isabel

If your flights are two separate tickets then you cannot check your luggage all the way through, that would have to be all on one ticket and it sounds like you already have your ticket to Athens. I personally would not want that tight a transfer. Especially if I were not doing carry on only. Athens airport is not that small. Even if your flight from France is right on time that's still an awfully tight connection but perhaps you could check with the second airline to see how far ahead of flight time you need to be at the gate. And if you do decide to wait and take a flight to Santorini the next day I'd spend the night in Athens itself. There's nothing to do out by the airport. (By the way, Athens is beautifully lit at night).

Doh

According to this website, Air France does interline with Aegean (but I can't find any info. on Olympic).

http://ru.aegeanair.com/e-services/t...ments/#-Ofcon4

My understanding is that, since they interline, if you have your itinerary on Aegean ready to show at check-in, then AF should be willing to check luggage through to Santorini even if it is two separate tickets. I admit, however, that I haven't tried it myself, so you might want to check with AF (or at least with the experts over at flyertalk). (If you haven't bought your tickets to Athens, then sometimes you can get Vayama to issue you a single ticket for flights on two airlines that interline but don't codeshare, but I really don't think it's necessary).

If you do check out flyertalk, you might ask for a second opinion on the connection time too-- I think it's reasonable if you check luggage through but not really comfortable.