We are planning to travel from SFO to Frankfurt roundtrip on United on miles. Our ultimate destination is Spain, but we can't use miles for the intra-European travel. We are hoping to buy cheap flight from FRA to Bilbao and later, Madrid to FRA, on Lufthansa or RyanAir or Condor. Since SFO to FRA and FRA to BIO, for example, on the outbound, will not be on the same ticket or itinerary, does anyone know whether we will have to exit skyside, go through customs to "enter" Germany, pick up our checked bags (since my husband refuses to fly with a rollaboard only) and then go back through security to get on the Lufthansa/other flight to Bilbao? I'm guessing the answer is yes, which wil make the very low cost much less attractive . . . .
Thank you for any and all suggestions!
Amy H.
Posted by
Chicago
7811 posts
Yes you have to exit go through passport control, to get your luggage and then to the checkin counter to recheck.
This is a gamble as you never know if your flight to Frankfurt from Seattle on United is going to be canceled or arrive extremely late; so you probably should give yourself 4 hours to make the flight from Frankfurt to Bilbao.
However Lufthansa has an alliance with United. If you book the separate ticket on Lufthansa you could ask them if they can combine the two bookings
Posted by
Tresana, Highlands Ranch, CO, USA
23242 posts
You are correct. Could possibility change terminals also. We have done that a few times. We always allowed at least a five hour window or more. Always worked until two years ago when the Lufthansa flight from the US was cancelled. Initially the flight was delayed over five hours so I knew that we had missed our connecting flight. Then after six hours Lufthansa pulled the plug. It was two days before we finally got to Europe. And, of course, lost the discounted connecting ticket and had to buy a more expensive ticket. Just a cost of doing business. We probably will be more reluctant to do that in the future.
Posted by
San Francisco area
1802 posts
Even if it you had one ticket you would still have to go through passport control and likely a security screening at FRA.
BTW, I have used United miles to book intraeuropean flights. For example BUD(Budapest) - FRA -SFO.
I did a search on United.com SFO - BIO and return MAD -SFO for random dates in May (7th and 21st). It showed seats available at 30K miles level via FRA or MUC outbound and Zurich, IAD, MUC, FRA on the return.
Posted by
New York, NY, USA
11294 posts
In addition to the points made above, be sure you don't have to change airports. Frankfurt's "real" airport is FRA; Frankfurt Hahn airport is quite far away (halfway to Luxembourg!) and is HHN. HHN is a major Ryanair hub, but I see that they now also have some flights from FRA.
Posted by
OP
San Francisco
13 posts
Thank you everyone! There are good prices on Lufthansa flights for the intra-European legs, but even if they are able to combine the itineraries somehow, I think it's too risky.
Rocket, thank you so much for the suggestions -- unfortunately, we have a narrow window on dates and it's close enough to the departure date that we weren't seeing much at decent times into BIO or out of MAD. But to avoid the risk of total disruption we'll work with what we can via FRA/MUC/ZRH. We'll also try into MAD and out of BIO.