Flights from the east coast (Dulles, Philadelphia, Newark) RT Dubrovnik or return from Split - 2024

It's just too early, but you could look at this month's results to get an idea of schedules. Lufthansa has reasonable layovers. I once had a minimal layover in Vienna en route to Croatia, so it's definitely possible to get a decent schedule.
Look for one plane change, about three hours for the layover.

We will be flying home to IAD from Dubrovnik in three weeks. We will have a three hour layover in Frankfurt. The flight is early, 7:25 am. The later flights all required an overnight layover. We booked on United. It’s Croatia Airlines leaving Dubrovnik then United from Frankfurt.

I flew last month from IAD to Dubrovnik. Overnight flight on United to Munich, reasonable morning connection on Lufthansa, arrival about 11 am in Dubrovnik. The United flight arrived about an hour late, and by the time I got off the plane, there was less than half an hour to make the Dubrovnik connection. Amazingly, I made it; the Munich airport is pretty efficient and the immigration line was very short. Not too surprisingly, my checked bag did not, but it came on the next Dubrovnik flight a few hours later and was delivered to my hotel. One thing about that, in the case of delayed luggage it was very helpful to be staying in Dubrovnik, for delivery purposes. There were some other passengers also filling out the paperwork at the lost baggage counter, and I overheard a couple who were going immediately to Montenegro being told that their baggage couldn't be delivered to a different country so they would need to wait for it at the airport, and others who were going to Split that yes, their baggage would be sent there, but how that would be done is when it arrived in Dubrovnik it would be flown to Zagreb and connect there to Split, where it would be picked up and delivered, which sounded like a recipe for more baggage trouble. My return flight was from Slovenia rather than Croatia.

Considering a trip in September 2024 to Croatia and considering booking two separate tickets for flights. One from Houston to Munich? then a separate ticket from Munich to one of the major cities in Croatia - flexible at this time. Trying to use miles to fly business from Houston and the prices from Munich to Croatia quite reasonable. Is there a problem booking separately like this? We typically carry on so luggage is not a big problem.

Does anyone have experience with this process?

Thank you!

Any time you buy two separate airline tickets, it's a gamble. If the first flight is late or cancelled, you are very likely to miss the second flight and have to buy a new ticket. Last-minute tickets can be much more expensive than the fare you see today for a flight months from now. Admittedly, the financial risk of doing this with a flight from Munich to Dubrovnik is not as great as it would be on your way back home; the cost of a last-minute one-way ticket from Europe back to the US can be very high.

I'm risk-averse when it comes to missing flights and would never buy separate tickets unless I planned close to 24 hours, or longer, at the transfer point--which would require a hotel room and cut into any potential savings. And padding the schedule like that reduces the time you'd have at the primary destination. I think it rarely makes sense unless you're buying tickets for a family, when the savings would be tripled/quadrupled/etc. and multiple people could share one or two hotel rooms.