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Follow up Cinci to Lisbon connections there or here?

Posted by (Georgetown,KY) on

Travel from the Midwest is challenging. There are very few options to make connecting flights within Europe rather than in US. DeGaulle and Heathrow are airports for connections there.

It’s much cheaper to fly from Cinci through Philadelphia to Lisbon. The primary downside for me is that if you miss that Philly flight you are basically stuck there for 24 hours.

Guess I’m trying to reconcile potentially losing 24 hours of a trip (self employed- can maybe get away for a bit more than a week so 24 hours is significant). Versus much higher cost but if something goes wrong, more likely that happens in Europe.

That happened last year. We travelled to Barcelona. Delay on the leg to De Gaulle and missed flight but multiple options to Barcelona from there so we didn’t lose much time.

Suspect I need to decide which bothers me more. Unless someone sees something I’m missing.

Posted by
88 posts

Suggest you look at Boston to fly direct to Lisbon- I don't know if you're stuck with DL or not. We, flying from NC have used SW to Boston, picked up our luggage, walked across to the International terminal, and flown to Lisbon. We also flew through Toronto using their U.S. partner.

Posted by
592 posts

Bottom line is that unless you are originating in a hub, and unless you are
ending up in a European hub, it's going to be city1 -> hub1 -> hub2 -> city2,
where city/hub 1 are in the US and hub/city 2 are in Europe. Basic math,
so to speak.

Of course, the chances of missing your connection increase with how close
you decide to cut it on the connection time. In either direction.

So, you're right in that once you get to Europe, you have more options to
get to final dest, but wrong, in that you also have ways to reduce the risk
of missing the outbound transatlantic connection. Pad the flight schedule.
Travel to the hub the night before. Research backup options ahead of time.

Depending on your choice of airline alliance, there are a few US hubs where
you have a chance of catching a later transatlantic flight if you miss the first one.
(JFK, ORD, MSP, SFO, LAX, DFW, ATL to name a few). But if, as you note, you care
about cost as well, you're trying to match two criteria that have nothing to do
with each other.

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