NYT Article on Airport Connection Times
 

This comes up so often. Did people read this interesting NYT article? Munich is supposed to be one of the best airports for connections:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...5AC0A9619C8B63

"Indeed, connection times in Munich average just 30 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in Frankfurt, 50 minutes in Amsterdam and up to two hours in both London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle...."

This echoes comments I got from a friend who visits her family in eastern France a few times a year. She really likes the Munich airport.

thanks so much -- I've been trying to figure out if 75 minutes is enough time to connect thru MUC.

For those traveling to the US to Europe with a European connection, one big factor is how likely will your flight departs on-time.

That's usually a much bigger variable than differences between airports (okay, LHR and CDG are bad; but the others aren't that different).

If you're flying out of JFK, EWR, ORD; you're asking for trouble if you schedule a 60-minute connection regardless of how good MUC or other airports are.

Good point, rkkwan.

I like the Munich airport. Last year it took me 20 minutes from the gate arrival (domestic flight) to sitting in s-bahn heading to the downtown.

I thought Amsterdam was a good airport for connections as it has just one terminal and I have been able to get from one gate to another in fairly short order on previous occasions. So I booked a flight on KLM from Toulouse to Amsterdam connecting to a Northwest flight to Boston with a connection time of only 45 minutes.

I knew it was a tight connection, but I figured it wouldn't be listed on the Northwest website (which handles KLM reservations in the US) unless the connection was at least theoretically possible.

But when we arrived at the check-in desk in Toulouse, the agent said the computer wouldn't allow him to issue a boarding pass because the connection time was too tight. The supervisor said they would telex Amsterdam (don't they have phones?) and tell the Boston flight to expect us, but that we would have to go to the transfer desk in Amsterdam.

The flight arrived on time in Amsterdam and within ten minutes we were at the transfer desk with over half an hour before the Boston flight was scheduled to leave. But the agent told us the flight had already closed and that there was no way to get on it.

We were rerouted through Paris and ended up in Boston a few hours after our scheduled flight, so it worked out OK. My bags took a vacation in Amsterdam.

I've learned my lesson. Even with the airline telling me a short connection is possible, I will not schedule anything like that again.