Strapped for time in Zürich
 

Traveling on American passport from the US through ZRH to CPH. Given that you can possibly be in line for an hour for passport control alone in ZRH, how would it make sense that United for a reservation would allow for only an hour and 55 minutes until the departure of the connecting flight?

IME passport control in ZRH takes a few minutes at most. We typically land, go through passport control, get checked bags, and make it to a train in Zurich airport within 45 minutes or so. You should be fine with 1:55 to connect.

1:55 in ZRH? You will even have time for a drink in the lounge...

And even if you stand in line for passport control for an hour, you will still have about 30 minutes left. Plenty of time to get to the gate for your CPH flight... :-)

In Europe, passport control is much efficient compared to the USA. The passport control should take no longer than 10 minutes including the wait in ZRH.

As the previous posters have mentioned 1h55mins would be high enough and you would have a minimum 30 minutes of time in the lounge.

...including a short train ride where you get to hear swiss cows mooing. ;)

That is a ton of time in ZRH!

I was in ZRH earlier this year and it never ceases to amaze me how quicky and efficient they are at processing passengers.

I was also at LAX and JFK a few weeks prior to being in ZRH. The difference is day and night.

I've flown through ZRH a few times this year and I've never had anything resembling a line, let alone a long line, at passport control.

Considering that is double the time you actually need, is your complaint in fact that they are wasting your time with such a long connection?

Actually, this June, it took me a little over half an hour to get through passport control at ZRH. A real surprise since it had never taken me much more than 10 minutes prior to this visit.

I have had several connections of 55 minutes at ZRH, non Schengen to Schengen, i.e. including security, train ride and passport control, and I never missed one.

At NOON for E gate pp check two flts arrive at adjacent gates: (1)LHR to ZRH, (2)a Belarus to ZRH, can cause big delays, I've flown (1) several times.:td:
I once arrived on a VERY delayed DL JFK-ZRH flt. (1)had not arrived but (2) did--they opened lots more pp check lanes than for only (1) and (2).

Maybe that’s the kind of overlap we encountered. The open room was packed with a long line spilling over into a hallway, while there were practically no one in line for EU citizens. It took us an hour and ten minutes to get through passport control alone.

I flew LHR-ZRH last week. After disembarking we found ourseveles at the back of a very long queue mainly consisting of non-white people and white people with American accents (thus assumed to be the non-EEA line), such that we couldn't even see the passport control booths.

Some people holding red passports (i.e. Swiss) off my flight were looking confused and eventually one of them barged through the queue, the rest of us with EEA/CH passports followed, and we had to duck under a metal barrier which led us to e-gates where there was no queue. Not sure why there was no clear path to the e-gates or the EEA/CH officer booths.