Jock 07 said:
They did the bus thing in STR as well.
Lots of European airlines do this. Especially for the flights to/from European cities on the European "regional" airlines.
The worst airport for a layover IMO is Milan. We landed at MXP from Sicily and had to take a bus to a completely different terminal. The bus ride must have been 20-30 min, and it had multiple stops at hotels, parking lots, etc. Because of that, the bus was super crowded and the signage giving directions on where to get on and off was absolutely terrible. We were lucky to squeeze on the first bus that drive by, but we left a long line of people behind and made multiple stops where no one could get on because it was so crowded
If you fly to Milan from some other city in Europe to catch your flight back to the US, be sure you leave a LONG layover. I had no clue about this, but since we were flying on two totally different airlines/tickets (a Euro-carrier to MXP to catch a United flight), I was already paranoid about missing connections. The whole reason I booked the flight out of MXP was because its departure time was the farthest from the earliest departure we could get out of Sicily.
FRA is often crazy busy at the EU destinations gates, but we've never had an issue arriving from the US at the international terminal. It's usually empty or barely busy (more so if you land early morning).
Many EU airports also won't let you check in at the counter until 2 hours before your flight. If the counter is even open earlier than that, I've been told I have to wait.
So, 1) if you get to the airport super early, you may be sitting around for a while and 2) you are almost guaranteed to have to wait in a long line to check in (even if you don't have checked bags). Because by the time they open the counter for check in, all passengers are at the airport and it's a rush to line up. This happened in Milan, too. Basically the entire plane was lined up to check in for the flight at the same time.
MXP wont even let you go past the main entrance lobby until your counter opens for check in. They have boards in the main lobby telling you what time you can go back based on your flight. The main lobby has nothing more than a cafe and a couple of convenience shops. All of the good shopping and restaurants is after check in. If you have thoughts of having a long layover there to shop at the Gucci and Louis Vuitton stores, you will likely barely have time to snap a picture before you rush to your gate.
