My Experience at Frankfurt Airport

My 3 hour connection at Frankfurt Airport was easily the most frustrating airport experience I’ve ever had.

We landed at a remote stand and got bused to the terminal. That bus ride genuinely felt like it toured the entire city before finally dropping us off at the main terminal.

Then came passport control. Absolute chaos. Airport staff were actively directing passengers into specific queues, only for the police officers at those queues to suddenly tell everyone to leave their respective line and go line up somewhere else after we had already been waiting for ages. This happened to me 3 separate times. I had to requeue 3 different times. If an officer wants to close their lane for a break, fair enough, but finish processing the people already waiting in your line instead of dumping everyone back into another line. The management and coordination there was horrific. Even my small hometown grocery store in Ontario handles lines way more efficiently than this airport.

To make it worse, they kept shutting down lanes while the wait time was already well over an hour. At one point there were only 3 lanes operating. On a major international connection hub. At a super busy period. Unreal.

After finally clearing passport control, there was another painfully slow security line. My bag got flagged because, in the midst of all the chaos, I forgot I still had some leftover water in my airline branded bottle from my connecting flight. Yes I acknowledge it’s my bad, but I immediately told them that it was water and they can just throw it out, but they insisted on testing it instead of throwing it out. Then after putting the bottle in this machine, they called over a police officer, and after all that buildup, the officer literally just unscrewed the bottle, did a smell test, and concluded that yes, it was in fact water. Hallelujah.

By then my flight was supposed to have already left. I still decided to sprint across the airport toward my gate. I genuinely thought my legs were giving out by the end of it. Somehow I made the flight because it was delayed by 30 minutes, and I ended up being one of the very last people on board.

First and last time connecting through Frankfurt. And this was without changing terminals. I honestly feel bad for anyone who has to do that too. I already felt bad for multiple people I came across while waiting in the security line who had already missed their connections. And when they were asking airport personnel for some clarity, they essentially got either mocked or just straight up ignored.

I left hungry, stressed, exhausted, and without even enough time to use the washroom. I’d heard Frankfurt horror stories before and assumed people were exaggerating. They were not.

Man, fuck that airport.