Airports, Immigration, layover time, etc.

I’d primarily be worried about the connection in Montreal. If you miss a connection on this side of the Atlantic, it often means that you get put on a flight the next day.

If you miss the connection in Frankfurt, there will likely be later flights on the same day to Budapest.

Do you have any options where your first leg is the transatlantic leg?

When we connected through Toronto, we did have to go through immigration there to enter Canada, to get to our AMS flight. There was a special path for passengers transiting through, and it was pretty fast as long as you kept moving. For Toronto, there was information on the process on the airport website, so maybe you'll find it on the Montreal website as well.

In 2011, I was returning from Europe through Canada. I purchased a 50 E bottle of scotch in duty-free in Poland. I carried that through the airport.

We went out of the inspected zone. All of a sudden, my bottle of scotch was 20 cl too much to carry on board. I luckily had a case I could put the scotch into and check. But there were 100s of bottles of olive oil, wine, scotch there. I imagine the airport inspection crew NEVER bought liquore.

If you go through Canada, DO NOT CARRY DUTY-FREE LIQUOR.

Thanks everybody! I agree now that Montreal could be the real problem (bottles of liquor notwithstanding). I'll keep playing around on United's website. It does seem that the miles tickets available swiftly constantly.

Caroline