thepriceofbeauty

Hello! and thanks in advance if anyone can give me some pointers.

I will be flying into Nuremburg Airport for Colorado, USA. I have never traveled abroad and I need to have a guestimate of how long it will take me from when I am OFF the plane and capable of picking up a pre arranged shuttle bus to take me to a festival. This need to be planned carefully as my shuttle bus leaves at 1pm (13:00)

What happened when you get off the plane, should I anticipate being held up? Do I have to be interviewed and searched?

StCirq

Your concern is not Customs, unless you are arriving from the USA with declarable goods that will have to be inspected and cleared and possibly fined upon arrival, which is not likely. Your concern is the Passport Control/Immigration line, which, depending on what time you arrive and how many other non-EU passengers arrive at the same time, can take 15 minutes or 50.

Then there's luggage. Are you checking a suitcase or anything else? That could take another 45 minutes or so.

And then there's landing. It's usually pretty fast at German airports, but the last time I went through Frankfurt, my plane took 45 minutes to taxi to the landing stage.

To be safe, and this assumes your plane from the USA actually arrives on time, I'd allow at least 3 hours.

treplow

I imagine that Nurnberg is not the first airport where you will be landing in Germany. More likely you will be arriving in Frankfurt (Lufthansa non-stop Denver - Frankfurt?). This is where you will need some time to go through immigration and customs. Unfortunately, around the time that Lufthansa arrives in FRA, usually several other Jumbos arrive as well. So there can be some longer lines at Immigration. I assume your luggage will be checked DEN through to Nuernberg. If you have nothing to declare, customs is just a formality; you just walk past the agent. Nuernberg airport is about the size of the airport in Colorado Springs, small by standards of DIA.

nytraveler

You need to consider several factors:

What time does your flight usually arrive (not scheduled but actual)?
Where are you seated on the plane? (If a jumbo those at the front will get into the terminal 15 minutes sooner than those at the reat)
Do you have checked luggage versus only carry-on?
Agree you will probably have to go through Immigration at the first airport you land at in Germany (and wasn;t aware that Nurnberg had flights direct from the US) Or are you changing planes at another airport? And is that within Schengen or not?

With more info we can provide a more specific answer.

treplow

On seconmd thought it accored to me that you might be flying Air Berlin, because Nuernberg is primarily an Aior Berlin airport. In that case, Duesseldorf is most likely your Schengen region port of entry. What I said about FRA still applies, except that Duesseldorf is not quite as busy with transatlantic flight arrivals as is FRA.