Originally Posted by NickB

I am not so sure that,as a general rule, one should necessarily make such an assumption. I would have thought what little transfer there is on Air Algerie is Int-Dom or Dom-Int rather than int-int. If there is only a small amount of transit traffic, it does not make a huge amount of sense to develop transit facilities that are little used. Even if you build the infrastructure for future proofing, it does not follow that processes and facilities would be in place on opening. That said, in that particular case, it would appear that opening up the possibility of accessing the transit market was one of the considerations behind the extension of the airport so it is possible that there will indeed be proper transit facilities when the airport is extended.

Originally Posted by jmail1

Agree with SkyTeam, UNLESS you have a 5 hour connection like we did. We landed from Cairo today at 12:45 and have a 5:15 connection on Iberia. I was not able to check-in online so instead of breezing through we had to wait almost two hours sitting in the terminal for the agent to come back with our boarding passes, likely waiting on the Iberia desk to open. We probably could have asked to move around or go sit in the restaurant, but given the language barrier (would have been easy had we spoken French) we just sat where they told us to sit and waited. I'm sitting in the lounge now and agree it's bad. Not Jakarta bad but it's got nothing other than slow wifi.

They are clearly VERY familiar with the process. I assume the new terminal will have a secure transit area but as far as an un-official process I can't imagine it being much smoother. I'm sure YMMV if you get a cranky staff member but based on these recent examples just have either your boarding pass or your printed itinerary and you'll be fine. Also, you DO have to fill out the immigration forms, or at least we did. They took our forms but we DID NOT get a stamp.

From the views on approach and from the airport this is a country I'd like to come back and visit.

Originally Posted by SkyTeam777

Oh my gosh, I forgot to update this. I did it last week, easy as pie. You just go down to immigration and tell them you're in transit. They take your passport and come back within a few minutes with the boarding pass and walk you to security and then the lounge. The lounge is AWFUL, FYI. It helps to have a print out of your itinerary to give the immigration person. It is super easy. Interesting about Iberia MAD-ALG, it was operating last week, but perhaps it was ending for the season?

Originally Posted by GetSetJetSet

Went through ALG twice recently. You would be coming in and going out on the same plane. When I came in on that IB flight there was little to no wait to get through passport control. Assuming you are TWOV and you wouldn't have to go landside, get a new BP and wait to go through immigration and security again it should be very easy to make the return to MAD. I would email swissport and verify that there will be an agent there to help you TWOV. If they are just walking you from passport control back upstairs to your gate it should be a cinch.

Originally Posted by Vasco Pridat

I was actually planning to stay in ALG a few days but screwed up to get the visa on time. so now I have to hop on a flight in the AM to fly into ALG and then 4h later start my journey thru MAD to LAX.
what I read from you is: this is possible .. thank god..
what I wondered tho: officially you need a transit visa! so will AF let me board in paris without a visa of ALGier??

how did you do that? usually you have to show the visa before you board or the airline wont take you?

thnx for your help

Originally Posted by qasr

I'd recommend you print our something like this: https://www.emirates.com/english/bef...uirements.aspx

If your inbound agent checks their system they will see same info but I found a printout can help tremendously.

Originally Posted by alanw

Does anyone know if the new terminal is open? No mention of it on the airport website.

I'm thinking about doing BCN-ALG on VY and then a separate ticket ALG-ROM on AZ. I'll have about eight hours to enjoy the services at the airport. Any idea if that's long enough to require a visa? Any problems with having the ongoing flight on a separate ticket? Presumably OLCI isn't available for the AZ flight.

Originally Posted by mofly

Okay, so just about completed a complicated daring same day/flight transfer at ALG this Sunday so I have few data points.

• The new terminal is now open but it does not necessarily make transferring easier as you still have to go through the same prosses with the Immigration officer and a Swiss Port employee.
• Even if you have your boarding pass for your onward journey printed before arriving you still have to get it stamped by an immigration officer, they do not accept self-printed/printed at home boarding pass or mobile variants.
• You must fill out the customs form. The form is only in French. Algeria is a French-speaking nation.
• Even if you have the correct physical boarding pass, I believe that a Swiss Port employe still has to confirm that it is valid.
• You absolutely can not enter without a visa with more than 12-hour connection maybe even less, two people on my flight were sent back. (It was during Champions League Final in Madrid so a lot of people were doing weird routing to cut costs as most flights out of Madrid last weekend were abnormally high due to the game, but the flights to ALG remained somewhat reasonable. There were around 15 + other transfers on my flight that's 15 x more have experienced at that airport on a single flight).
• I would at least leave 2 hours for any connection as the immigration officers do not always make it easy and it's not an airport that handles transit without a visa in an unconventional way. If you have bags you may want to go for 2.5 hours +.
• Doing the same flight turn around is risky and raises eyebrows from everyone. I almost missed my flight I was attempting MAD-ALG-MAD-NYC as the price was a lot cheaper in biz than flying out of Madrid. The connection was 1 hour from arrival to departure. I printed my ticket and boarding pass and still had a lot of difficulties. No one seemed to know what to do and kept asking me why would you do this, the Swiss Port employes still had to take my passport reprint my boarding pass and come back and get me. The security checkpoint is now closer to the immigration stands and I think it's designated for transfers but is not very intuitive in placement and you still need to do the immigration as well as wait for a swiss port employee to get your boarding pass. It makes it worse if you arrive and depart at remote tarmac stand as you have to add time for the bus transfer.
• Due to the above, both long and short connections are not advised even with the brand new terminal.

Originally Posted by mofly

Originally Posted by GetSetJetSet

What airline did you fly that used the new Terminal? I was there in May and flew in from FCO on AZ and out to MAD on IB and both used the old terminal. I could see that the new terminal did in fact appear open but only Air Algerie planes were parked there. Has everyone migrated over now?

Originally Posted by mofly

Flew Iberia but Air Nostrand operated.