New analysis Missed connection? These airports perform particularly badly
Short transfer times, long distances and delays can be expensive. A new study shows which airports most often cost travelers their connection - and what rights passengers have if their next flight takes off without them.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- A new analysis for 2025 shows that travelers at airports such as Bergamo, Dallas Fort Worth, Frankfurt or Paris Charles de Gaulle miss their connecting flight particularly often.
- According to the study, Florianópolis Airport in Brazil and Tallinn Airport in Estonia offer the best chances of a smooth transfer.
- Those who miss their connection are entitled to compensation, depending on the airline.
An analysis by the passenger rights portal Airhelp shows: Those who have to change flights are much more likely to have bad luck at certain airports than elsewhere. For the analysis, the travel tech company evaluated internal data from the year 2025 on actual missed connecting flights.
This resulted in a risk score of 1 to 10: the lower the value, the higher the probability of missing the connection, as travelnews.ch reports.
However, the study has a catch: only airports in Europe, the USA, Canada and Brazil were taken into account - not the whole world.
The result is surprising: it is not a huge airport hub such as London or Paris that performs worst, but Bergamo Orio al Serio in northern Italy. With a score of just 4, the airport has the highest risk of missed connecting flights in the ranking according to Airhelp.
Dallas Fort Worth in the USA follows in second place on the negative list. Several major European transfer airports also performed poorly: Frankfurt, Madrid-Barajas, London Stansted, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam Schiphol all achieve comparatively low scores and are therefore among the airports where travelers miss their connections particularly often.
As Travelnews.ch reports, passengers have the best chance of a stress-free transfer at Florianópolis Airport in the south of Brazil. The airport in the Estonian capital Tallinn, which is one of the most reliable transfer airports in the evaluation, also performs very well.
It's best to plan enough transfer time
To avoid missing a connecting flight in the first place, Airhelp recommends allowing sufficient time depending on the route. For domestic flights, transfer times of 30 to 60 minutes are usually sufficient. If you are changing from a domestic to an international flight, you should allow 60 to 90 minutes. For international connecting flights, the company even recommends leaving up to two hours in reserve.
However, if the connection is missed, travelers are not automatically on their own. Within the scope of European air passenger rights, which are also relevant for Switzerland, airlines must organize alternative transport in many cases. Depending on the situation, those affected may also be entitled to meals, an overnight stay in a hotel or even compensation of up to 600 euros.
