Lucerne lodging and public transportation

I take it you have not yet picked your lodging in Luzern. If you stay in a hotel, you will receive a guest card to use public transportation in the city for the length of your stay.

So the places you are looking at, put that address into www.sbb.ch/en as the "From" point and Zurich Flughafen as the "To" point and see the route with a bus and train, arriving at Zurich airport by 8:15.

Thanks for the help! You're right, we haven't chosen accommodations yet. We're trying to determine if we really need to limit our possible choices to those within a few minute's walk to the train station. Your suggestion will definitely help.

It’s a little over 1 hour, so you’ll need to leave Luzern sometime in the 7:00 hour.

Take it from me from personal experience and don’t rely on buses the morning of a flight or trains with no buffer time. Last summer we stayed in Fluelen on Lake Luzern. We needed to bus to our train station from the chalet we rented. We’d ridden this bus countless times over the 10 days we were there with no problems. Inexplicably the morning of our flight the bus was running 30 minutes behind schedule according to the app. We ended up running with all our luggage over cobblestone streets for 20 minutes to get to our train in time. It was stressful. Ironically also that morning other members of our family had left earlier to catch an earlier flight and their train was delayed so much that they missed their connection and lost all their built in buffer time. All of us made our flights but it was not an enjoyable morning for any of us.

Stay within walking distance of the train and take a train slightly earlier than what your preferred time is in case there is an unexpected delay. Most likely you’ll be totally fine with no issues (we went years with no airport departure drama) but delays do happen randomly and it’s worth simplifying an early morning to not add stress.

Good advice! Even with Swiss precision, things can always go wrong. Having one less connection probably makes sense. Do you think it would be wisest to just stay the last night in Zurich also?

No, I think staying within reasonable walking distance to the Luzern train station is a great idea. A 1 hour direct train with a buffer of an additional one should that one get completely delayed for some odd reason will be more than safe.

Makes sense. Thanks.