Connecting flights via a Schengen area airport

[PoodlesRUs]

I'll provide examples to hopefully aid clear communication.

1. If a UK passport holder flies from the UK to Thailand and their flights connect in France, does that person have to go through any passport check providing they stay airside? I don't think they do but does anyone know for sure?

2. If the same person left the UK for Malta and flew via France (just an example!) would the passport check occur in France or Malta? I think France because that's the first point of contact with the Schengen area?

It's been ages since I flew and I can't remember the setup.

I know when I flew UK to Finland via the Netherlands after Brexit I had to go through a passport check in the Netherlands.

And I'm sure when I flew Finland to UK via Denmark(?) there was some kind of passport check in Denmark but I imagine that was the UK's own rules. <<< This part I could be misremembering.

UK was never part of Schengen, so Brexit had no effect on needing passport control when entering/leaving Schengen (though in some countries it may have changed which line British passport holder uses).

You are correct on your assumptions:

1. You go through passport control in your first/last Schengen country
2. If you are connecting non-Schengen to non-Schengen on a single ticket, you will not usually have to go through passport control. There is possibly some rare circumstance in some airport where you do have to go airside and thus do passport control but 99% of the time (admittedly made-up statistic), you will not.

In your last example, you would have done exit passport control in Denmark, since you were leaving Schengen.

Brexit - Brexshit - happened. So you have to comply with the rules.

Also means from November I think you have to fill out some kind of European Esta, like in USA to be able to get into the country of the EU.

Hilarious that the Brits don't think the rules apply to them. You got what you voted for.

Schengen rules have been usurped today by Germany bringing in new rules on Border Controls.

And right they are.

Just make sure all your passports are up to date.

In your last example, you would have done exit passport control in Denmark, since you were leaving Schengen.

@McSpoot Ah, thank you! Booking some trips and I want to make sure I'm leaving enough time for transfers. I hate feeling time-pressured at an airport.

Very much understand the worry. It also gets confusing when you conflate/confuse Schengen with EU (I was on the other side of this - living in Switzerland which never was EU but is within the Schengen zone).

If you book end to end with the same airline, they won't normally let you book impossible transfers and they will sort you out of there is a problem. I'm paranoid though, so normally allow at least 90 mins and reconcile myself to spending a fortune on coffee. For European flights, if you transfer after 10am and before 5pm local time things normally go faster too. Then you miss all the big Asian and US flights with lots of transfer passengers who need lots of paperwork.

Yes you have to go through passport control. I'm just about to do this and it's a tight transfer time so I checked. But if you have a biometric passport it should only take a minute, most major airports have self service scanners now so you just scan your passport, the camera checks your face and you go through a barrier.

@PoodlesRUs

It’s hard to find up to date chapter and verse on this but there’s usually a requirement for a passport check since some nationalities (not UK/Brit AFAIK ) require what’s known as an Airport Transit Visa, even if they are staying airside in the international zone.

As an aside, the goings on in Germany do not mean the Schengen Agreement holed below the water line, dead, or being usurped. It has always allowed individual countries, even individual ports and airports, to impose extra restrictions. For example it is not that uncommon for there to be extra spot checks at the Spanish/French land crossings and at our local airport here in southern France.

Cost is I think 6 euro and last 3 years. Not the end of the world but yes another thing to consider. I was annoyed until I learned cost and station

Germany has not changed the Schengen rules - there are just more border checks than usual (i.e. usually there are none). All Schengen countries can, and do, increase checks from time to time for all sorts of reasons, but the so-called "tightening up" of the checks by Germany does not change anything for 99.9% of people entering the country. As someone who regularly crosses the German border, I can confirm that border checks there do occur (perhaps once or twice a year) and that these are usually spot checks. I drive a car registered in a neighboring EU country so I'm rarely pulled over. The main difference is that under the tighter rules, all traffic is in theory being stopped and checked rather than just spot checks being carried out.

The Schengen ETIAS visa exemption that costs €7 will not come into effect until the spring of 2025. The measure that is being introduced in November 2024 is the EES, which is an electronic registration system for travellers into Schengen from third countries including the UK. This entails a facial recognition check and having fingerprints taken at the border on entering the Schengen area - both of which are added to a central database.

Anyone flying through a Schengen airport should probably check that their passport is valid for Schengen entry (passport no more than 10 years old, with 3+ months of validity on it, and ETIAS from when that comes in) simply because if your connecting flight is delayed overnight, you will need to go landside to get to a hotel.

Similar considerations apply to people flying from, say, London to New Zealand via LAX. In fact I think in that case they check for an ESTA in London and will deny boarding if you don't have one.

I recommend this document [PDF], which is aimed at carriers (airlines etc) but contains a lot of nuggets of info for the nerdier sort of traveller. Section 6.26 suggests that in the case mentioned by the OP, the airline does not need to check for an ETIAS, which matches what @McSpoot wrote. But good luck showing that to the check-in person who's actually someone on work experience whose colleague just went for lunch.

You will need to go landside to get to a hotel. Unless its Schilpol Amsterdam. I've been put up in their sleeping pod things inside the airport by KLM before.

I've flown to Bergen transiting via Copenhagen post Brexit with no passport control whilst in transit. Usually passport control is at the end of the journey unless you need to collect baggage because its not routed all the way through. In which case you need to go through passport control, baggage claim and customs before you can check your luggage for the next leg and then it is usually just a ticket and passport check as you check in and then clear security, with passport control at destination.

It will depend on the origin of your travel document presumably a UK passport, and destination as to whether you need additional documents.

Of course now, you can check your UK passport for entry and exit stamps so that might remind you of what happened last time. If there's no stamp, there was no control.