Today's connecting flight experience was kinda LOL. It worked out fine but was unnecessarily complex.
Posted by
ty97
Aug 29 '24, 09:42
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I was flying London to Tbilisi, connecting in Dusseldorf.
For those not familiar with the concept, much of Europe is party to the 'Schengen Agreement' allowing border free travel between countries, e.g. no immigration between Schengen countries. This applies to almost all EU countries (not Ireland because of their soft border with Northern Ireland/UK). Several non-EU countries in Europe (like Switzerland) are also party to Schengen.
(tangent: Vatican City is not a party to Schengen but there is no border between Italy and Vatican City. Italy *is* Schengen so Vatican City becomes *de facto* Schengen. Same applies to San Marino and I think one or two other microstates)
The UK is not part of Schengen and never has been (even when they were in the EU). The country of Georgia is not in the EU and is not part of Schengen.
All of that is to say: I was flying from a non-schengen country to a non-schengen country via a connection in a Schengen country.
Sounds complex but at the majorof connecting hubs in Europe it's generally quite simple. Part of the airport is the Schengen Zone, part of the airport is the non-schengen zone, and then there are immigration desks separating those two sections. So if you arrive from a non-Schengen destination and are continuing to another non-Schengen destination, you just stay in the non-Schengen zone of the airport until you board your connecting flight.
Easy Peasy.
Except Dusseldorf has two separate non-Schengen zones that are separated from each other by...the Schengen Zone of the airport.
I had a 60 minute connection.
- We arrived at a remote stand and had to be bused to the terminal.
- The bus dropped us off at 'gate A90' aka a door at the end of the A pier, in the non-Schengen portion of A.
- I then had to go through immigration to enter the Schengen zone/Europe in order to get into the Schengen zone of A.
- Walk through the Schengen Zone of A, up some stairs, across a connector bridge, past the B concourse (which is also Schengen at Dusseldorf) across another connector bridge to the C gates
- C gates are non-Schengen so I then had to go through immigration to *exit* Schengen/Europe in order to enter the C gates.
- Walk to my C gate which is on the lower level because, yep, it's actually a bus to a remote stand.
So basically I was in Europe for about 15 minutes and got two stamps out of it.
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