We are flying from Chicago to Prague. Many of the flights head direct into Europe, then switch planes into Czech. How long of a layover are you comfortable with? I want to shorten the full fly time as much as possible, but a layover and plane change of only 40 minutes makes me nervous. Do we have to hit customs once we land in Zurich? Ex: Swiss air, Chicago to Zurich, 40 min delay then anothe rplane into PRague. Thoughts? any insight is appreciated.

If you are only changing planes and your luggage is checked through to your final destination, there's no reason you should have to go through customs.

A 40 minute layover should be doable as long as your first flight is not delayed. If your first flight is delayed long enough to cause you to miss your connection, they will book you on the next flight as long as seating is available. Just for the heck of it, you might look at Swiss Air's schedules to find out when the next flight would be.

You'll go through immigration and customs on arrival in Prague. Generally I like to have at least an hour connection time, longer if I'll be taking the last connecting flight into my destination city that day. Is there a later flight in case your inbound is delayed? If you're traveling on one ticket, they'll reaccomodate you.

Patt is corret -

You must make sure this is issued as a single ticket and that your luggage can be checked all the way through. that way if your first flight is late and you miss the second the airline must cope with t. (If ou book as two separate tickets - you're on your own to find an answer and it could be very expensive).

One thought: have a look at your initial flight out of chicago to see what it's on-time record is. If it's good - take a chance. If it's bad - book a later connecting flight.

It was my impression that these flights were all booked together on Swiss. If that's not the case and you are buying 2 seperate tickets, then I wouldn't risk such a short layover.

Hi eroz,

You have to go through Immigration in Zurich.

40 min is very, very, tight.

1:20 hr is comfortable.

Ira, when you say immigration, do you mean just a passport check? It seems like that's all I did when I had a layover there in 2002, and it wasn't a long process. I agree that 40 minutes is very tight, especially if eroz is using 2 tickets.

The problem with such short layovers is that the incoming plane can easily be that far behind schedule. No experience with these particular airports, but a number of times recently I've sat on the runway after landing, as we had to wait for a gate to free up for us to unload. 1/2+ hour last time at Heathrow. People were getting VERY antsy who had short connections to be made.

Since neither of these countries is part of the Schengen treaty, I don't believe eroz would be going through immigration until arrival in Prague. Zurich is just a transit point.

YOu guys are awesome, thanks so much! We'll make sure we have at least an hour between flights.

I have flown to Prague from the US, going through Paris (CDG) en route and I never went through any immigration until getting to Prague. My bags were checked through, also. You never know about flight delays, but one hour sounds good. Actually, I think I did miss my Air France connection at CDG to Prague because of some airplane delay (not due to the connection per se), but I didn't worry because I knew Air France had several flights each day to Prague, and I just got on the next one.