Simple Query about changing planes

[Flock1]

Hello,

This is probablyobvious to most of you...

Tomorrow, I'm going to Tallinn with a stopover at Copehagen to change planes. The wait at Copenhagen is over 2 hours. Can I leave the departure lounge and go through to a cafe? And if I do, how much of a pain in the neck will it be? I presume customs, metal detectors, passport check etc will have to be endured?

Cheers in advance

[Cyrano]

Flock1:

Copenhagen airport is well set up for transfers: you will find several cafes/bars and lots and lots of shops airside, so you should have no need to go landside. If coming from the UK/Ireland you'll have to go through passport control to get into the terminal in the first place.

C.

[Flock1]

Cheers for that.

Out of interest, on the way back from Latvia a while back, I stopped off at Copenhagen then. The connecting flight was only 40 mins away, so when Ieft the Air Baltic plane, I simply walked down the terminal and sat down at the gate. Then I got on the next plane. How come I didn't have to go through passport control then?

[The SSK]

Cheers for that.
Out of interest, on the way back from Latvia a while back, I stopped off at Copenhagen then. The connecting flight was only 40 mins away, so when Ieft the Air Baltic plane, I simply walked down the terminal and sat down at the gate. Then I got on the next plane. How come I didn't have to go through passport control then?
Because you never entered Denmark...

[WHBM]

Most Schengen European countries have expanded their domestic arrangements to now include Schengen flights, the significant check is if you are coming to/from countries outside Schengen.

Both the UK and the Baltic countries are outside Schengen so you can stay on the airside of the immigration checks in both directions. One result of this is that often now the non-Schengen flights are concentrated in one part of the terminal, making airside connections between them even easier, although I have to say I have never paid attention to this particular aspect at CPH.

BTW I have done a sub-30 minute ACTUAL connection at Helsinki from a UK flight to a Finnish domestic, the inbound having been significantly late (well done Heathrow !), and that includes bus in from aircraft 1, immigration, changing terminals by a very long walk, security, and bus out to aircraft 2. Phew ! But it shows it can be done.

[Flock1]

Thanks everyone.

As it happened though, the flight got changed and we didn't transfer at Copenhagen. It was Helsinki instead. Got off the Finnair flight and hung around in departure lounge for thirty minutes until connecting flight to Tallinn.

[The SSK]

Back in the mid-1980s, Copenhagen got itself onto a security blacklist because of a curious loophole. Flights to the Faroe Islands (a Danish dependency) left from the Domestic pier and got domestic i.e. minimal security. Returning flights were to the International pier so transfer passengers could go directly to their onward flights without further checks.

Somebody somewhere came up with the scenario that you could buy a weapon on the street in CPH, fly to the Faroes with it on your person, fly back with it to CPH and transfer directly to an onward European flight - without at any stage having gone through the full cross-border security procedure.

However minimal the threat, airports around Europe introduced increased security on flights from CPH. At my local airport (Brussels) a portakabin was set up to screen CPH pax before they entered the main terminal. All this lasted a month or two before CPH closed the loophole.

I complained about having to go through thr portakabin, but when it was explained to me why it was there, I was quite impressed that they had gone to all this trouble to counter such an obscure threat.