Layover for flight that may be delayed

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Do you feel lucky?

If your inbound flight is late, and you arrive with not enough time to make the connecting flight, it is likely to leave without you. In rare cases, if a lot of people from your flight (or multiple inbound flights) are transferring to that flight, the airline might hold the plane, but again this is pretty rare. Don't count on it, especially in tightly scheduled airspace such as Europe.

If you miss the connection because your flight was late, the airline will rebook you on the next available flight to your destination at no cost. This may or may not be a nonstop flight; you may end up transferring in another connecting city.

The biggest problem with missing an international flight connection, though, is that the next flight to your destination might be nearly 24 hours later. In some corner cases the next flight may be two or more days later. While the airline will rebook you at no cost and pay for a hotel and meals if your layover exceeds a certain amount of time, you still spend a day or more in a city where you expected to be in and out in minutes, and have less time for whatever the purpose of your trip was. And as Traveller noted in a comment, this may also affect bookings you have made in your destination city, so you will need to take care of those as well.

If you intend to book this flight, you can check the airline's scheduled departures from the connecting city to see how long you might be delayed there if you miss the initial connection.

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