How much time is needed before a flight
 

How early should we arrive to the Frankfurt airport before our flight home through Iceland? We plan to arrive by train from Dusseldorf. I am looking at a 11:50am arrival for 14:00pm flight does this seem reasonable? We will not be checking baggage. Our other options appear to be 11:30am and 10:30am. Thanks for your help.

Hi K,

If you are headed to the US, I suggest the 11:30.

You might not get held up for 3 hrs, or you might.

((I))

You really need to ask your airline - some have stricter requirements than others. But I'd want 2.5 to 3 hours for flights ending in the US.

Without baggage or customs, what can I reasonably expect to go through on our way from the train station to our gate with Iceland air? There will be a security check? or more? Electronic check-in? or check-in desk?

There will certainly be security, and passport control since you will be leaving Schengen.
Will you have checked in on line and printed your boarding passes? If so you can go through passports and security. If not then you need to either check in at a desk or a machine, or print out boarding passes if you haven't done that.

You will then go through security for the US in Iceland I imagine, not at Frankfurt. That takes longer.

Since thie first leg is counted as a EUropean flight I would think you would be fine with the train you want, but as a worry-wart I would want to be on an earlier one, just in case things aren't running on time.

I'd rather sit at an airport for a couple of hours than just miss my flight for timing things too tight.

Icelandair will tell you minimum check-in times on their website, and Frankfurt airport will also have a recommended time on their site.

I'm not familiar with the term Schengen, this means Mainland Europe? Thank you for the informative replies.

Oddly enough Icelandair's site has check-in times ranging from 2 hrs at Munich, 2.5 hrs at Schipol, and 3 hrs at CDG, but no time listed for FRA.

Schengen is the name of the zone in EUrope where you can travel with no passport checks at the borders. It is not the same as the EU - some EU countries aren't in Schengen (most notably the UK and Ireland) and some non EU countries (such as Switzerland and Norway) are. You are allowed 90 days in 180 in the Schengen zone without a visa. The date of your entering is entered into a central computer system and your exit date is likewise noted.

I would as I said err on the longer side for your arrival at the airport. trains can be delayed, their can be unexpected massive queues for security and so on.

Thanks, again.

Iceland is in Schengen

If you connect and change planes in Reykjavik you will not leave the Schengen area until then.
In that case, and without luggage to check, your flight will be handled like a domestic or intra-Schengen one from Frankfurt to Berlin or Madrid.
Therefore you won't have passport control and should be at the airport 60-90 mins before departure. As you may have a bit of a walk to your gate.

I would ask Icelandair if any special procedures are to be taken into account for those pax en route to the US.

It depends on how risk averse you are.

Train can be delayed, there can be delays at the airport security line - or events in other parts o fthe world can affect procedures.

I was flying from Lisbon back to the US (before 911) when there were apparently lots of "buzz" from potential terrorist groups. Got to the airport 3 hours in advance and barely made it. After checking luggage and going through regular security (3 or 4 questions) we were then separated into a separate security area and all had to go through a second and much more rigorous security. We were held in that area until escorted out to buses (by soldiers armed with machine guns) and then driven out to our plane - at the far end of the airport.

So - I always get to any airport far enough in advance to allow for some sort of delay. IMHO better to read for an hour than be galloping through the airport trying to get there before the door closes.

NYT
Your advice is always sound when you leave from Europe on a non-stop flight to the US.
Icelandair has no non-stop flights from Frankfurt to the US.

What you usually do (but OP must ask airline to get a valid answer!) is that you get on a regular Frankfurt- Reykjavik flight. Which is an intra-Schengen flight with no passport control and just the regular one security checkpoint.

In Reykjavik you change planes, i.e. get off the plane, go through passport control, have all the extra security checks for flights to the US, and board the plane to the US.
As if you had a flight from FRankfurt to JFK with a transfer in Paris or Amsterdam.

Therefore, it is absolute nonsense to arrive in FRA 3hrs before departure as there is nothing more you need to do to get to the gate as if you were traveling to Berlin or Paris.
If there was baggage to check, it would be a different scenario, of course.

That of course is good advice as long as:

There is no delay in the train from Dusseldorf

There is no problem getting through security (either for the OP or for other people on the line)

Nothing else unforseen happens

As I said, how risk averse is the OP

Correct.

My only objective had been to get the message across that getting to the gate of an Iceland-bound flight incurs no more security or other checks than getting to a domestic gate.

I just checked that Icelandair uses Terminal 2 in FRA.
WHich means for OP to take the bus shuttle from the airport's train station to T2.
If you follow signs for T2 from the train station you will automatically end at the bus stop of the inter terminal shuttle.

An alternative would be to walk straight into T1 and take the intra-terminal people mover from there.
But the latter requires a longer walk.

For either way, you need to factor in 15-20 minutes.

To save the time at check-in counters, OP should use the online or mobile check-in to be able to skip the check-in desks and walk straight to security.
If that was not possible, OP will be bound by Icelandair's check-in deadline (which I do not find on their website).

Security checkpoints at FRA do not take longer than 5-20 minutes to clear. And 20 minutes would already been regarded as an outlandish long wait. Don't take off your shoes btw, unless you wear some with lots of metal attached.

So if you have your boarding pass printed out or on your cell phone, the whole procedure to get from the train station's platform to the gate in T2 will be appr.30min best case to 60 minutes worst case (including some time for orientation, bus shuttle, security, and walking).

Add any safety buffer for possible train delays at own discretion.

All things considered, I'd say that the 11:30 train is a good compromise, though I'd take the later one if I had to catch that flight.