How much time do you need between two flights? What happens if you miss the connection? And why two separate tickets are a risk most passengers don't see.
Connecting flights are a way to reach almost anywhere — but they raise questions a direct flight doesn’t. How much time is enough between two flights? What if the first one is delayed? And there’s one trap that can cost you your whole trip, which many people don’t know they’re falling into. Let’s take it in order.
What minimum connection time is
Every airport has a defined minimum connection time — the shortest interval officially considered enough to move from one flight to another at that airport. That time takes into account the distance between gates, any passport control, repeat security screening, and the transfer of baggage.
When you buy a ticket with a connection as a single booking, the airline and the system guarantee the connection time is sufficient — you can’t book a connection shorter than the minimum. That’s the first reason the way you buy matters.
How much time is comfortable
The minimum is exactly that — a minimum, not comfortable. For a connection that involves:
Transit only (no exit from the zone, no passport control) — the minimum time is often enough, but a connection under an hour is tight. A terminal change or passport control — you want more room, usually two hours or more. An international connection with re-checking baggage — more still.
If you’re a nervous traveller or travelling with children, take a longer connection deliberately. An hour and a half that looks “wasted” is cheaper than a missed flight.
What if the first flight is delayed
Here comes the key difference, and it depends entirely on how you bought the ticket.
If it’s a single booking (one ticket for the whole trip): the airline is responsible for the connection. If the first flight is delayed and you miss the connection because of that, the airline is obliged to rebook you onto the next available flight at no extra cost. Your baggage is also checked through to the final destination and transferred automatically.
If it’s two separate tickets: nobody is responsible except you. And here’s the trap.
The separate-ticket trap
This is the most expensive mistake with connecting flights. A passenger finds two separate cheap flights — say, Skopje–Vienna with one airline, Vienna–London with another — buys them separately because together they work out cheaper, and thinks they have a connection.
There’s no connection. There are two independent flights that happen to be at the same airport.
If the first is delayed and you miss the second, the second ticket is lost — the airline on the second flight doesn’t know and doesn’t care about your delay on the first. You’ll have to buy a new ticket on the spot, at the price of the day. On top of that, the baggage isn’t transferred automatically — you have to collect it, check it in again, which means both more time and going back out and in through security.
The saving from two separate tickets vanishes the moment something goes wrong — and on connecting flights, things go wrong more often.
When separate tickets still make sense
They aren’t always a mistake. If the price difference is large, if you leave a very big buffer between the flights (half a day, an overnight), and if you’re aware of the risk — it can be justified. But then it’s a calculated choice, not an accidental trap.
Where we come in
This is exactly the situation where an agent saves more than they cost. When we plan a trip with a connection, we look at the whole route as a whole: whether the connection time is sufficient and comfortable, whether a single booking versus two separate ones is worth it, and where the risk lies. If two separate tickets really are better for you, we’ll tell you — but we’ll also explain the whole picture, so you don’t discover at an airport in Vienna that the second ticket is lost.
For complex routes with a connection, send us the details and we’ll put together the best and safest combination.
Connection times, rules, and prices change and differ by airport and airline. For binding information, your booking’s terms are authoritative.