Flying into Basel instead of Zurich

Our July Avalon cruise sails from Basel. Getting to the Zurich meeting spot by 2:00 would be nearly impossible without coming a day early, so I booked our connecting flight out of Frankfort into Basel. Lands at 1:45. Ship sails at 5:00PM.

I assume we can easily get a taxi or Uber from the Basel airport.

Any see any potential issues with this?

The potential issue I see is that you haven't left enough room for anything to go wrong. If your flight is an hour late, you can probably still make it. If your flight is cancelled or really delayed, you miss the boat. We always fly in a day early, and think of the hotel cost as an insurance policy [with a positive payoff if everything goes well that we have time for a little sightseeing and/or to recover from jet lag]

Our July Avalon cruise sails from Basel. Getting to the Zurich meeting spot by 2:00 would be nearly impossible without coming a day early, so I booked our connecting flight out of Frankfort into Basel. Lands at 1:45. Ship sails at 5:00PM.

 

I assume we can easily get a taxi or Uber from the Basel airport.

 

Any see any potential issues with this?

I'm really surprised that you had more difficulty getting to Zurich (which is the end of a transatlantic flight) than getting to Basel which requires a connection in Frankfurt, which many people have complained is a difficult airport to make connections in. Remember that you enter the Schengen zone in Frankfurt, so you go through immigration there before boarding your connecting flight to Basel. Have you left enough time for that?

I would have assumed that Avalon's 2 PM time is set based on the arrival times of overseas flights; they know that not everyone comes in early.

I'm really surprised that you had more difficulty getting to Zurich (which is the end of a transatlantic flight) than getting to Basel which requires a connection in Frankfurt, which many people have complained is a difficult airport to make connections in. {/quote]

 

You're assuming that you can easily get a transAtlantic flight directly into ZRH. We couldn't, so we are non-stop into FRA.

 

 

 

Remember that you enter the Schengen zone in Frankfurt, so you go through immigration there before boarding your connecting flight to Basel. Have you left enough time for that?

We have almost two hours at FRA to connect to Basel. And we're in the front of the plane on the inbound flight. Should be no problem. Of course, as always, that assumes the flight is close to on time. Hopefully, being an east bound flight, it will arrive early.

 

I would have assumed that Avalon's 2 PM time is set based on the arrival times of overseas flights; they know that not everyone comes in early.

 

The ship sails at 5:00, thus the 2PM cutoff time for arriving flights at Zurich. This cruise does not spend the first night at it origination but heads out and cruises over night to it's first stop. So, the transfer time from Zurich is based on the needs of the itinerary and the needs of people who choose to fly in on Day One. And that's as it should be.

We don't have the option of coming a day early. Flying into Basel gives a nice margin of time.

I think you will be fine with these arrangements although I wouldn’t want much less than 2 hours to connect from an international to internal Schengen flight at Frankfurt. It’s an airport I know well. From Basel airport it’s less than 20 minutes to where most ships berth.

As an alternative you might want to check out a flight from your home airport to connect with a trans-Atlantic flight direct to Zurich to take advantage of the ship transfer.

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We wanted to use United miles for our flight and nothing was available direct to ZRH that would get us there in time.

Connecting through FRA was no good as it got us there too late.

Non stop to FRA should work out okay.

We do carry on only so no worries about our bags going astray.

On our Rhine cruise (not with Avalon) we flew to Amsterdam on Delta and then to Basel on KLM. No problems with any of our flights.