Stuttgart Airport Terminal 3

Terminal 3 handles both directions, which at Stuttgart is worth stating explicitly because Terminal 2 next door does not. Arrivals are on level 2, the same as Terminals 1 and 4.

The airlines are a specific mix: TUIfly on the leisure side and KLM feeding Amsterdam, which means Terminal 3 sees both the holiday charter passenger with four suitcases and the connecting business traveller with one. Those are very different pickups and they arrive into the same hall.

Terminals 1, 2 and 3 stand under one roof with Terminal 4 joined by a walkway, so the whole airport is walkable end to end in five to ten minutes. A free shuttle runs every ten to fifteen minutes for anybody who would rather not. Eight free minutes at the kerb, on both the departures and the arrivals level.

Your driver waits inside Terminal 3 arrivals on level 2, with a name sign, working from the flight number.

The KLM connection is the one where this earns its keep most often. A missed or delayed Amsterdam feeder puts you into Stuttgart at an hour when the S-Bahn is thinning out, and a car that has been tracking the flight is already adjusted for it before you have looked at a departure board.

The four terminals sit in a row along one road, so landing at Terminal 1 or 4 instead costs a walk of a few minutes or a free shuttle ride. We take the terminal from the live flight, so this is a fact about the airport rather than a thing you have to manage.