Make the hours between flights count.
City guides written for the hours between flights rather than a fortnight's holiday: getting out of the airport, whether the app on your phone works here, which local laws will get you arrested for something legal at home, and where to eat and what to buy once you are out.
Today’s guide
Amsterdam
The train station is under the terminal and the city is seventeen minutes away, so Amsterdam is one of the few European stops where a short layover is worth leaving for, provided you know which bank card the gates will accept.
Read the Amsterdam guideNext up
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Compare two citiesGulf & MENA
Full guideDubai
The busiest crew city in the Gulf, and the one where the gap between what is normal at home and what is legal here is…
Full guideDoha
A single-hub city built around one airline, with the strictest public-conduct rules of the major Gulf layovers.
Full guideAbu Dhabi
Etihad's home base, and a city where the airport bus stops at 23:00: only the N2 covers the night.
7 sectionsRiyadh
A metro line runs right into the terminal, but the only travel window the operator publishes ends at midnight.
7 sectionsJeddah
The high speed rail station sits inside the terminal, and it shuts at 00:30, which decides most crew transfers here.
7 sectionsCairo
Two ordinary habits get crew into trouble in Cairo: getting into a taxi without settling the price first, and…
7 sectionsMuscat
Muscat is laid out as a line along the coast rather than around a centre, so every layover plan here is really a…
Asia
Full guideSingapore
The easiest major layover to move around, and the one with the least forgiving drug law on the network.
Full guideBangkok
Cheap and easy to move around, with a vape ban that catches more crew than anything else on the network.
Full guideHong Kong
One of the few long-haul stations where a short layover genuinely buys a city, because the Airport Express covers…
Full guideTokyo
Haneda and Narita are two different layovers that happen to share a city: from Haneda you are at Shinagawa in eleven…
Full guideSeoul
Incheon sits well outside Seoul, but a non-stop train covers the gap in 43 minutes, which turns the whole layover…
Europe
Full guideIstanbul
Turkish Airlines' hub, and a rare city that publishes every taxi tariff itself, so the meter is checkable against the…
Full guideLondon
Three rail routes out of Heathrow, a black cab meter with three tariffs, and a knife law that catches crew out more…
Full guideParis
The airport taxi fare is fixed by law rather than run on the meter, and the ordinary Metro ticket does not cover the…
Full guideFrankfurt
Twelve minutes to the Hauptbahnhof, and one law that matters far more than the rest: drugs, explicitly including in…
North America
