Our 17-year-old American son will be flying unaccompanied from Washington to Valencia via Zurich. The layover time is about 90 minutes and the agent I talked to at Swissair said there is no need to worry about the short layover. What should we know about this connection? What will the process be and should we be concerned about the time? Thanks for any tips.
Posted by
Freedonia
19066 posts
Is this on one ticket or two separate tickets?
When he arrives in Zurich, he will go through Schengen immigration.
If this is on one ticket, and if he has checked bags, they should automatically be transferred to his next flight. If for some reason he misses the connection, the airline is obligated to get him to Valencia on the next available flight at no charge. (Assuming the delay was not his fault.) Ninety minutes should be enough time.
If two tickets, then he would go through immigration, collect his bags, recheck them in, go through security and then on to his gate. Ninety minutes would be tough.
At Valencia, he will not have to go through immigration but would pass through customs. This is more than likely a walk through.
Check to see if he needs any special travel documents besides his passport due to his age.
Posted by
Chicago
1390 posts
If his inbound flight is late, or he's delayed getting off the plane and thinks the connection
will be tight, tell him to not hesitate to ask for help.
Most likely he will need to take a train from the E concourse to the Schengen part of
the terminal to catch his connecting flight.
The other thing he will have to do in Zurich is register into the EES system in order
to clear immigration. Experiences with this have been all over the place in terms
of how (un)organized it is and how long it has been taking. If it's crowded and he
doesn't assert himself, he could stand there for a while.