How to make the most of a flight layover

Plane Talk: Singapore’s free city tour for passengers in transit is back

Time traveller: Dubai international airport (Simon Calder)

In the halcyon days of the Northwest Airlines standby airpass, the minimum connecting time was about two minutes. Once you had invested in the unlimited travel pass, staff were happy to help you make the most of the opportunities.

I was flying in from Charlottetown, capital of Canada’s Prince Edward Island (with US pre-clearance before the flight). The plane parked right next to an aircraft heading for Baltimore. It was a simple matter of wandering across the apron and asking the cabin crew member at the door to secure a seat, strap in and make for Maryland.

Nowadays you are obliged to enter an airport terminal and find the appropriate departure gate. Even so, some connections are still ambitiously short: at the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta, the minimum is 35 minutes for US domestic-to-domestic transfers. That is a lot more feasible than it might look thanks to the rule that once you have cleared security at an American airport, you do not have to do so again when changing planes.

A regular topic in my inbox: “I have a one-hour [and usually a few minutes] transfer from arriving in the US to leaving on the onward flight.” Despite having to clear US Customs and Border Protection, these tight connections generally work better than you might imagine. Airlines would not sell them otherwise.

In October my Singapore Airlines morning flight from Heathrow left an hour late, which was disappointing for those of us with a 60-minute connection in the city-state for the day’s only flight to Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory. But the pilots made up half an hour on the long haul to South East Asia. Even with a security check, the transfer was straightforward.

An airport is akin to a hospital or a prison. You don’t want to be there, and you want to leave as soon as possible. So I will continue to schedule connections as tight as the system allows. Yet there appears to be a clear majority of travellers who prefer several hours between planes.

Fortunately, for those of us genetically unsuited to duty-free shops and airport bars, the options for making the most of the time have never been wider.

In Singapore, I often build in a day-long stop. Coming back from that Australian trip, I timed the journey to arrive at dawn and leave at midnight – creating a day of adventure to discover the city’s new dimensions. Yet if tangling with the public transport system is not for you, the free Singapore city tour returns this week after three years.

I could scarcely believe the deal when I tried it, before Covid. If your layover is at least five-and-a-half hours long (and less than a day), you can register in advance for a free sightseeing tour. Alternatively, just turn up at the well-signposted desk with your inbound and outbound boarding passes.

There is a menu of 2h30m tours, including “Changi Precinct” (exploring the north of the island) at 9am and “City Sights” at 12 noon. You must clear passport control, but that is normally very swift; your checked baggage, if any, stays in transit.

As far as I know, Singapore is the only free tour. But other world hubs offer plenty of options for DIY transit tours. Here’s my pick of the best.

Amsterdam

Make for the railway station but take a train in the opposite direction to the Dutch capital. The fine city of Leiden is only 15 minutes away, and offers rewarding wandering through the compact centre. If you have a really long connection coming soon, you could hop on the bus to Keukenhof, tulip capital of the world.

Doha or Dubai

I hope the two main Gulf hubs will forgive me lumping them together, but both have fast, frequent Metro links to the city centre. Doha has the edge right now, thanks to the marvellous new National Museum (which has its own Metro station).

Dublin

Take bus 102 to the handsome beach resort of Malahide.

Madrid

Time your journey for the “Lunch Layover”: take the Metro one stop to the village of Barajas and the legendary Restaurante Jumbo for a feast that you certainly won’t find airside.

Reykjavik

From Keflavik airport, the Blue Lagoon is much closer than the city centre.

Your recommendations are most welcome: s@hols.tv will find me