I have never been to Europe and I have a change of planes in Zurich. I have 50 minutes to get my luggage, go through customs and get to my new plane (Swiss Air). Is that enough time? Is it easy to pick up checked baggage and get to customs and on to my next flight?

Help.

If you have to gather your luggage and recheck your luggage, no, that's not enough time for just about any airport. You have to go thru customs than back thru security. That would be an impossible task in my opinion.

Are you sure your luggage won't be transferred to the new flight automatically, then you would only have to go back thru security and reboard your new flight. Then it would be close, and you might make it.

Give us some more details.

I concur with Budman's thoughts. For what it is worth, I have flown via Zurich four times and missed two of my connections. Swiss could not have been kinder when booking me on a later flights. Check the times of subsequent connecting flights. Hopefully, there will be one that adds only minimal delay to your itinerary should you not make your scheduled flight.

By the way, my luggage transferred all the way through on each trip. I was on UA and Swiss each time. I had to clear security before boarding my connecting flights, but it was a painless and quick process.

We've flown Swiss through Zurich with a 50 minute connecting time several times and never missed our connections. The luggage is typically checked through at least if you're coming from the US or Europe.

Thanks for the help everyone.

I start out on Scandinavian from Copenhagen and switch to Swiss in Zurich for a flight to Geneva (great fare, what can I say). How do I find out if my luggage wll be checked through? I did call Swiss and they have flights every hour and said they'd get me on the next one if I missed this one.

SAS and Swiss are both major airlines and will have interline baggage agreements. You just have to get SAS to tag your bags to your final destination when checking them at CPH.

It may take a few minutes or a phone call for them to figure it out, but it can definitely be done.