Calm my fears please......

[caryba]

Booked my airfare (through the Celebrity) with AlItalia for my 2006 Med cruise. They have me flying out of EWR into Rome, then a change of planes and off to Venice. I will arrive in Rome at 7:45 am and the flight for Venice is at 8:55 am. My fear is that I will not have enough time to get off the plane (hope to God I don't need to my collect my luggage), go through customs onto my next terminal or gate all within the hour. I am so nervous now. This is not how I wanted my long awaited Europe trip to start out. I think I might have screwed up here. HELP!!!!!

[JJPNYC]

If you're nervous, I would contact Celebrity (or your TA) as they wouldn't have booked you on this if they didn't feel that you could make it.

 

Also as a note, typically you only have to clear customs at the end of your journey, so you shouldn't have to worry about clearing customs during your layover since you are still en-route.

[caryba]

Thank you so much for your reply. That helped!

[DanJ]

Maybe that's how Europe does it, but in my Canada to US experience, if I fly from a Canadian airport not equipped with US Immigration, then we clear at the first US airport we land at, not the final destination.

[wrp96]

Maybe that's how Europe does it, but in my Canada to US experience, if I fly from a Canadian airport not equipped with US Immigration, then we clear at the first US airport we land at, not the final destination.

 

It's the same way in the US too. I know our local airport is not equipped with US immigration because it is only a National airport not an International airport.

[Globaliser]

Also as a note, typically you only have to clear customs at the end of your journey, so you shouldn't have to worry about clearing customs during your layover since you are still en-route.

caryba will have to clear at least immigration at Rome, because the Rome to Venice flight is a domestic flight.

 

However, the baggage may be through-checked and automatically transferred because even on a domestic flight there are ways of identifying baggage that has originated outside the EU and therefore needs to be customs-cleared at the final destination: the airline should be able to say. By EU arrangements, there are many international->domestic (or international->intra-EU) connections where bags are through-checked and transferred because they are customs-cleared at the final destination rather than at the point at which they technically cross the common customs border.

 

Nevertheless, I wouldn't worry in the slightest about this. Rome-Venice is not exactly a backwater route. While 70 minutes is a close connection, it's published and legal so the airline will be responsible for reaccommodating you if you misconnect at Rome. And there are six more flights later in the day on Alitalia alone at 0950, 1250, 1640, 1815, 1950 and 2130. So there really isn't much chance of you not getting to Venice the same day.