How long needed for an airline connection Santorini to Athens to US

[bostonjim]

We're cruising to Santorini and flying back to the US connecting through Athens. Does anyone have experience on how long we need to plan in Athens for an Aegean Air connection to Lufthansa? Currently we have to leave Santorini on the 7am flight (yuck) to give a 3 hr connection layover recommended by travel agent. Would love to sleep in to enjoy the morning and take a noon flight that would provide a 1 hr connection time to Lufthansa. Is that enough time? It's not advised by our US travel agent. Are they right or are just being too conservative? I thought we could check straight through in Santorini?

[ab0si]

Even if you can (I have no idea if this is true or not) check your baggage straight through and get your boarding pass for the Germany bound flight in Santorini, you would still be risking missing your flight home.

 

If your flight from Santorini is late, you will certainly miss your connection.

The early morning Aegean flight is on-time a bit over 90% of the time.. an excellent record .. but that still means it is late 10% of the time and you will most likely miss your flight home whenever it is late.

[Mands&Ian]

Would love to sleep in to enjoy the morning and take a noon flight that would provide a 1 hr connection time to Lufthansa. Is that enough time? It's not advised by our US travel agent. Are they right or are just being too conservative? I thought we could check straight through in Santorini?

 

Sleep on the flight back to US or sleep at Athens during that 3 hour layover.

 

If you are ticketed through to your final destination then the 3 hours is probably plenty; anything less than that sounds like a risk to take for an extra hour in bed. If nothing else you are switching between domestic and international.

 

Mands

[Mands&Ian]

It just occurred to me: it'd be worth re-posting or cross-posting this query to the dedicated Cruise Air sub-forum. That way you'll be able to canvass opinions from those within the industry.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=128

 

Mands

[Trece]

The whole plan makes me nervous! A few years ago we were on a non-cruise vacation where we stayed in Athens a few days, with plans to fly to Santorini for a week, and then fly back to Athens for a few days. We got to the airport in Athens in the morning to fly to Santorini only to find the air traffic controllers were doing a one-day wildcat strike and nothing was flying. They kept us at the airport the entire day promising that it would resolve and it did not. About 5pm we decided to can the flight idea & we hurriedly made ferry arrangements, had to hire two cabs to take the four of us from Athens airport to Piraeus, where we made the overnight ferry with minutes to spare. We look back at it now with a lot of fond memories, especially the cabs chasing each other down the highway a la Amazing Race, but at the time we were livid that we lost a precious vacation day hanging around the airport. BUT, in retrospect, we had no flight to connect to or other issues to worry about (we had sufficient funds to book the ferry & the cabs, for example, because we had to wait to get our air ticket refunded). With the constant strikes in Europe these days (many of which we don't hear about on our regular news coverage & I think Greece is #1 for strikes), I personally would want to be in Athens the day before (depending on how urgent your need to get back to the US). At the very least the three hour connection would be a given. I will say that our return flight from Santorini to Athens went off flawlessly.

 

I know we can't anticipate every glitch like this when we travel & we can get over paranoid about things, but we've been back to Greece since then & I do make my arrangements a little bit differently now. :D