Stuttgart Airport Terminal 1

Terminal 1 sits at one end of a row of four terminals standing along a single road, three of them under one roof. Arrivals are on level 2, which is true of every arrivals hall at this airport — the level is never the question at Stuttgart, only the number.

And the number is a real question, because the four are not interchangeable. Terminal 2 handles departures only: it has no arrivals hall at all. So while Stuttgart looks like a four-terminal airport, an arriving passenger is only ever coming out of Terminal 1, 3 or 4. A Lufthansa passenger who checked in at Terminal 2 on the way out does not come back to it on the way in.

Getting between them is easy in a way it is not at the big hubs — five to ten minutes on foot depending on your pace, or a free shuttle bus every ten to fifteen minutes. The forecourt gives eight free minutes, and unusually there are short-stop zones on the arrivals level as well as departures, where most German airports keep the arrivals kerb clear.

Your driver waits inside Terminal 1 arrivals on level 2, with a name sign, working from the flight number rather than the terminal on your booking.

Stuttgart is 13 km from the city and the S-Bahn under the terminals is decent, so the honest case for a car here is not the airport run into town. It is the region: the Neckar valley, the manufacturing towns strung along the B27 and B14, and the business addresses in the suburbs that the network reaches slowly or not at all.

A drop-off or a landing at the wrong terminal costs you a walk of five to ten minutes along one road, or a free shuttle — not a train, not a journey. Stuttgart is the most forgiving of the four-terminal layouts for exactly that reason. The one thing worth knowing in advance is the Terminal 2 asymmetry: you can be dropped there to depart, but you cannot be met there on the way back.