Frankfurt Travel Forum

I am traveling to Paris and I will have a 1 hour layover in Frankfurt. I am wanting to at least be able to walk around the airport and get a beer. Does anyone know if one hour will be enough for me to get off my plane, have a beer and catch my next flight? Since I am traveling from the U.S. will I have to go through customs before getting on my next flight? Is the airport terribly busy on a Monday afternoon (in march)? Thanks for the help!

I would not count on it.
I have been through about 130 airports and Frankfurt was the worst by far.
We flew Lufthansa from San Francsico to Frankfurt with a connection to Amsterdam. We had about an hour and just barely made the connection and that was without stopping for any reason. Our bag did not make the flight-the only time it has ever happened to us in almost 900,000 miles of flying.
Yes, you do go through customs in Frankfurt.
Have a safe trip!

Hi Chrissy,

Frankfurt is a vast airport with very long distances between the arrival and departure gates; so I wouldn`t run any risk and hurry up, to make the connection to Paris - the French have a very nice beer, you may savor in Paris without pressure!
Greetings from Vienna!

Firstly, do you have to collect your luggage or not? I certainly hope that upon departure you get your luggage checked through all the way to Paris because one hour is not enough time to collect it, go through customs, check back in again, and go through passport controls and security checks. I would recommend at least 1 1/2 hours between flights in this case.
Secondly, will you be able to get your boarding card for the Paris flight issued at your airport of departure? If you don't know, ask your airline (should be posssible, for instance, if both flights are Lufthansa). If so, you won't have to go to the transit desk at Frankfurt to check in for your next flight, but if not, you will and there could be a queue. It is impossible to say whether there will or won't on a Monday afternoon in March, because these things are unpredictable; on one occasion when I was travelling through Frankfurt there had been some sort of problem and flights were backed up, which meant long queues at the transit desk with people who had missed connections trying to get new reservations.
Thirdly, if you don't have to collect your luggage (which means you stay "airside") you will not have to go through customs but you will, have to go through PASSPORT controls (you do know that customs applies to goods, not people?), between the part of the airport where you arrive from the U.S. and the part where you depart for Paris, and of course security controls on hand luggage before you enter the gate area, so I would not advise you to dally on the way to your gate. You will probably be leaving from Concourse A of Terminal 1 but without knowing which airline you are arriving with I don't know which concourse you will be arriving at, you can check this for yourself on http://www.answers.com/topic/frankfurt-international-airport which lists which airlines from/to which destinations use each concourse.
Normally I would guess that you will have 10 minutes to spare for a quick beer, but if you don't get your boarding card until 30 minutes before the flight is due to depart, don't delay in the central area where the shops are, you still have to get through 2 if not 3 queues before you board your plane and depending which gate it is it could be a bit of a walk, FRA is very spread out.

P.S. Vulindlela is wrong, unless you leave the transit part of the airport e.g. if you have to collect your hold luggage (and it does not sound as if they did), YOU DO NOT GO THROUGH CUSTOMS. You do go through passport control, which is not the same thing. You also go through security checks at the entrance to each group of gates within a concourse, and at one time when there was a lot of construction work going on at the airport you seemed to have to go through these several times at temporary barriers, but the last couple of times I have been through it was only once, although you may find there is a further hand-baggage (liquids) control at the gate itself.

Life is full of disappointments isn,t it! i agree with the others, Frankfurt has 3 terminals and you may have use a sky train or shuttle bus to get to your next boarding gate so don,t waste any time.

Yeah, you are right!
I am used to Customs AND immigration being together like in the US.
Sorry. It is EU Passport Cointrol.
Right or wrong though, there is not enough time.

As the other said; you got to rush between your flights ;)

AND if you buy any liquidish or creamy stuff from dutyfree when you leave, do get the bag sealed and do NOT open it until you are out of the last airport. If the seal is broken all of the stuff that don't fit into the tiny bags for liquid will be taken away from you.