r/FrankfurtAirport

We missed our connecting flight at Frankfurt Airport even though the entire journey was booked together through Condor and we had around 2 hours to connect.

At this point, the whole setup honestly feels like a scam: the airline sells you the connection, the airport and immigration fail to move passengers through in time, and once you miss the flight, everyone points at someone else while you are left paying for the consequences.

To me, there are multiple parties that needs to be held accountable:

1. Condor Airlines

• Condor sold us this connection as one itinerary.
• After we missed it, they told us that because we had more than 1 hour, the connection was considered sufficient and therefore it was essentially our problem.
• They refused reimbursement for hotel and meals.
• They tried to rebook us on a flight 2 days later, even though flights were available online for the next day.
• We ultimately had to buy another flight ourselves and pay out of pocket.

If these delays at FRA have been going on for months, why is Condor still selling these connections and then refusing responsibility when passengers miss them. There were atleast 10-12 people that we know of on our flight that missed because of the exact same reason.

2. Frankfurt Airport

• The queues were extremely long, with no effective system for prioritizing passengers whose flights were about to depart.
• There were people cutting lines before us because of which the lines were barely moving.
• Passengers should not be forced to argue, cut lines, or beg employees for help because the airport cannot manage traffic properly.
• One airport employee actually suggested that we cut the queue ourselves (at our own risk) if we wanted to make the flight. Another employee said it is for the people in the line to fight with people cutting the line, and its not their job to manage crowd. This is dangerous, and could have actually resulted in physical fight between customers.

3. German Border Control / Immigration

During peak international connection times, there need to be enough officers processing passengers. For a queue that was as long as 200-300 people there were only 2 officers on the counter. They initially had 6 counters open, and then 4 just shut down midway. If people with 1.5–2 hour connections are repeatedly missing flights, it points to a capacity and planning problem.

This is what makes it feel like a scam system: Condor sells the itinerary,FRA airport processes the connection, Immigration controls the queue.
Then when the connection fails, nobody accepts responsibility. But they all get their share of payment extracted out of customer's ticket.

We paid Condor for one complete journey. We did not independently stitch together two risky flights. Condor sold us that itinerary.

If this problem has really been ongoing for 3-4 months, airlines should either stop selling these tight FRA connections, increase the minimum connection time, or provide proper assistance and rebooking when passengers are stranded because of known airport bottlenecks.

Otherwise, it starts to look like a system where everyone gets paid upfront and the passenger carries all the risk.

Has anyone else experienced this at FRA, especially with Condor? Were you able to recover the cost of your replacement flight, hotel, meals, or transportation?