Terror or Boredom? Connecting in Frankfurt

Lufthansa is a first-rate, professional airline. Did they sell you these two tickets together as a package? Are they "revenue" tickets? I would rely on them, although it looks very tight. Frankfurt is a HUGE airport, but they have told you the gates are in the same terminal. It's worth checking whether they will allow you to check your luggage through to DFW in Amsterdam. Most likely they will, because it is the same airline.

You failed to say that you're a US citizen, but you can expect to get in the the longer, All Other Passports immigration line in Frankfurt. I would ask Lufthansa how far that is from the international departure gates in Terminal XXXXX. Or maybe you can look at an online map of the terminal.

If you miss the flight, I would expect Lufthansa to send you to another American airport with a domestic connection to DFW. It is also early enough to send you to another European airport with a direct flight, if they exist. But then you and your luggage would get separated. It is difficult to overstate how many flights Lufthansa has at Frankfurt.

When exiting Europe, you do not go through customs. You'll go through US customs and US immigration upon arrival at DFW. When exiting the Schengen zone, you do go through immigration. You will exit the Schengen zone in Frankfurt, so you will need to go through immigration/passport control there.

What great info! Thanks guys. Will check it out.

My guess is you will change terminals in Frankfurt, we always have to. If passport control goes well it will be fine but tight, if passport control takes as much time as it did for me last time I was in Frankfurt you might miss your connection. If you have a full onward flight and you are among the last to board because of the tight connection then you may have to check your carryon. Otherwise all good.

Some parts of Frankfurt airport still have the security screening at the gate, which can lead to local queues. Don't think that usually applies to Lufthansa flights though.

You do not change terminals in Frankfurt when using the same airline. They all have dedicated terminals. You can google your flight & number to see where they usually land or depart from as well as their punctuality on Flight aware. Frankfurt airport also lists arrivals and departures where it is easy to see which gate they usually use. This is a Lufthansa hub and they are always in terminal 1.

This is a good connection time. I wouldn't worry about it at all.

But Terminal 1 has three separate concourses, A, B, & C. (Terminal 2 has two, D and E.) You generally have to leave one concourse, and go out of security in order to enter another concourse, where you again go through security, even in the same terminal. So it is important to know if the gates are in the same concourse.

There is a tunnel between concourses A and B, and it was my impression that the tunnel was supposed to be within the security zone, but, when I went through it from A to B, there was a security checkpoint entering concourse B, but this was 4 months after 911 and security was really tight. That might not be the case today.

Added: And, BTW, there is also a Concourse Z, which is in the same buildings but on a different level (above, I believe) as Concourse A. It's an "in transit" concourse, for planes coming from or going to non-Schengen countries, so people just passing through FRA don't have to go through immigration checks. Chances are you will have to go upstairs, through immigration, to the Z concourse before getting you departing flight.

The terror portion of the trip will be DFW. If you use the mobile pass app it will get you by the immigration part very fast, but it will slow down the customs part (mobile pass bumps the passport check from immigration to customs). I still recommend mobile pass though, for DFW.

In October we flew Lufthansa from Munich to SFO and had to change in Frankfurt. I believe we had a 1 hour layover. Yes, it was all the same terminal, but it is a massive terminal. We had to show our passports twice (one line took longer) but we made it to our SFO flight just as boarding started I believe. I will add that we were walking VERY fast, but it is doable. In fact, when I mentioned a short layover to the counter agent in Munich she said "oh, no, that isn't short."

We have connected through Frankfurt on Lufthansa several times now, including Amsterdam to Frankfurt to Philadelphia. Yes, the complex is huge. You could have as much as a 20 minute walk from your incoming gate to your departure gate depending on the gate of your arrival. Or it could be shorter if you deplane on the tarmac to the buses, as the bus unloading spot is centralized. In any event, all you have to do is follow the signs up to "Z" level, which is where the International flights depart from for leaving Schengen. The "Z"gates are directly over the corresponding A (I believe it's A) gates, it's the top level of the A concourse of Terminal 1. Depending on where you have entered the terminal, it is possible you may have to go through airport security again first, before you go to Z deck. That has happened only once to us. When you enter Z deck you will go through Immigration exit, which has always been trivial for us. It is likely that your gate will be out by the end of this section, at least it always has been for us, hence the long walk. Our flights home have always been 90-100 minute minutes and we have never had an issue with time. One suggestion, if you need some food (since you are leaving Amsterdam so early), if you have time find stuff before you go all the way down to the high numbered gates, the last several hundred yards down this concourse have very few options.

As an aside, we once outbound had to make a connection to Istanbul on Lufthansa, with our flight from Philadelphia having been delayed and deplaning started (door opening) on the Tarmac 20 minutes before scheduled takeoff (so buses had to fill). We made our flight; helped immensely by the facts that we were not entering Schengen so no passport control, we did not have checked luggage, we knew in advance what to do and were trucking, and with typical German efficiency knowing where their transfers were they held our flight for maybe 5 minutes.

MrsEB that's good advise. When we fly through Frankfurt from Budapest on Lufthansa we almost always end up with a bus from the tarmac to the terminal building. This adds about 15 minutes to the time you are actually in the terminal and able to identify your next gate and start heading that way. Arrival I believe has been in B, but departure has always been from the Z gates and that was a long haul. We have accomplished two 1 hour transfers by worrying, pushing a little and moving as fast as we could; but that was before Passport Control became the zoo that it was on our last trip through. My tolerance now is a solid 2 hour lay over or not at all. But its not just Frankfurt. I went through Amsterdam two nights ago and it was a zoo too, and it used to be one of the easier airports. As for DFW, some times its easy, sometimes not. The world has changed and the airports are a little behind on catching up with new realities.

Although the buses can add time while waiting for them to fill, they also can help. When we had that almost missed connection, had our plane actually gone to its expected gate we would have been at the farthest point out in terminal 1's A gates, with close to a mile to walk to the outlying B gate that we needed. Because the bus unloads at the base of the B hub, actually on the far side from A, we immediately saved about 3/4 of a mile of walking, and were simply directed from the door to up a set of stairs and we were already in the B section. I am not sure we would have made the flight with normal gating that day. Of course, YMMV as they say.