EU Immigration and flight lay-overs

October 23, 2023 1:09 PM

I have a flight from Boston (BOS) to Paris (CDG) coming up. We have a 90-minute layover in Dublin. Do we go through EU immigration in Dublin, or in Paris? An hour and a half doesn't seem like enough time. I assume that we get off the plane, because our seats are different; it's two different flight numbers, but both in Terminal 2.

On the way home, we change planes in Shannon, Ireland. We do our US immigration & customs back in Boston, right?

(I haven't been to the EU since 1992, and I know this has changed a lot -- and COVID only made things worse.)

posted by wenestvedt to Travel & Transportation (8 answers total)

There's U.S. preclearance in Shannon.

You should be doing customs and immigration in Dublin. There should be a MCT (minimum connection time) established for international -> EU connections and your airline should have respected that in scheduling. If not, they should change your flight.
posted by praemunire at 1:15 PM on October 23, 2023

I had a layover in Dublin on the way to Barcelona last month. We went through customs in Spain, not Dublin. FWIW, on the way back, we had a 1h45 min layover in Dublin, got stuck on the tarmac for like half an hour due to problems with the jet bridge, and we still made it through US preclearance and hauling ass all the way across the airport to make our connecting flight in time to join the boarding line. So I imagine that barring any major delays in Boston, you'll be fine to make your connecting flight to Paris.
posted by yasaman at 1:52 PM on October 23, 2023

On the way to France: you will go through passport control/customs/etc. at CDG. I wouldn't worry too much about the connection because if you miss the connection because of a flight delay they will just put you on the next flight to Paris and it will be fine.

And as praemunire points out, *usually* it is the case that you would clear customs in Boston when coming from another country, but in the case of a handful of airports, including Shannon, you preclear in the origin country *before* arriving in the US. It is, IMO, super great, because when you get off your flight all tired and jetlagged you just walk off the plane and don't have to mess around with bureaucracy and lines. The only downsides are that you are a bit busy before you get on the plane AND you can't bring anything past customs (in Shannon) that you aren't allowed to bring to the US, so if ordinarily you would e.g. pack a fresh lunch to bring on the plane, know that you can't count on being able to do that, it could be confiscated.

If you have a long layover in Shannon on the way home and you were thinking about leaving the airport, remember that in that case you do have to clear passport control (into Ireland from France). Although Ireland and France are both in the EU and the Eurozone, for passport control purposes it's more important that France is in the Schengen Area and Ireland is not.
posted by mskyle at 2:23 PM on October 23, 2023

OK, the Flight Connections set-up is a little different than I remember from my research for my last trip, which was a few years ago, but do note that you cannot use it if you have two separate tickets. (It sounds like that's probably not the case for you, but just in case.)

Anyway, MCT for transatlantic connecting to short-haul is 60 minutes, so you're probably good.
posted by praemunire at 2:42 PM on October 23, 2023

(Preclearance is great; nothing makes you want to die like coming off a TATL at like 6:30 am and shuffling into those grimy immigration halls at JFK. With Global Entry, it takes up only a few minutes pre-flight.)
posted by praemunire at 2:45 PM on October 23, 2023

Ireland isn’t in the Schengen Area, so if you’re traveling on one ticket from BOS to CDG, you’ll clear passport control and customs in Paris. That’s what happened, mutatis mutandis, when I flew Aer Lingus from Boston to Nice in summer 2022.
posted by brianogilvie at 9:41 PM on October 23, 2023

mskyle & brianogilvie: France is in the Schengen Area and Ireland is not.

Ah, this is the key point that I didn't realize -- thank you both!

praemunire: Preclearance is great; nothing makes you want to die like coming off a TATL at like 6:30 am and shuffling into those grimy immigration halls...

We flew home from the Caribbean last year, and once we got through Customs & Immigration in Charlotte, we had to go through TSA screening for our connecting flight. Time was tight, it was late, and there was a lot of grumbling in that crowded hallway, you betcha.

--
My gratitude to all of you. This eases my mind a lot. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 8:07 AM on October 24, 2023

I haven't ever connected through Dublin from the USA, but I have flown in from the UK and Schengen lots. All arriving passengers at Dublin are directed through the same sets of passport control (there may be an exception for the 2 domestic routes), but there is a flight connections desk ahead of that.

Anyway, none of that is my personal experience. What is personal experience is that of being able to leave Dublin airport after having successfully made it to a departure gate. Given this, I assume that there is some kind of rudimentary (for US passport holders, at least) passport checking even though you don't fully enter the country. The airport's documentation about connecting flights does mention you'll need your passport at the connections desk, but I'm confident it will be straightforward.
posted by ambrosen at 4:59 AM on December 24, 2023