Geneva airport is an anomaly. As you’d expect, it’s mostly located in Switzerland but it also has a very small part which is in France. It’s called the “French Sector” which, according to the website; “allows its users to: check their bags and take an internal flight to a French airport without having to pass through Swiss territory”. It seems logical enough, the problem is that they have not provided a way to move from one to the other without difficulty.
On the day in question I was not flying in or out of the airport, I was just going there to rent a car. The car rental companies have locations in both parts of the airport and when you book online they give you the choice of both. I did a quick google search which seemed to suggest that if you’ll be mostly in France then it’s mildly preferable to rent from the French side, and if you’ll be more in Switzerland then it’s the opposite. This seemed logical enough so I booked the French side since I was going to Chamonix. There was not warning about getting to the French side.
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On arrival at the airport I followed signs to the French sector, as instructed. “Boarding pass please”, the border guard asked me. “Sorry, I’m just going to rent a car in the French sector. Here’s the car rental confirmation”. “Sorry you can only pass if you have landed here today”, he told me. Since I was visibly agitated he added “Sorry, it’s the airport rules. I cannot let you through without a boarding pass”.
So the French sector is about 100 metres from the Swiss side but the only way to get there, if you haven’t arrived by plane that day, is to take a 40 euro taxi out of the airport, all the way around the airport perimeter, into France, and back down the other side of the airport. I was not best please but, to the credit of Enterprise car rental, they took 40 euros off the price of the car rental for the inconvenience. I rented my car and went on my merry way, albeit a bit pissed off.
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On reflection I decided that there must be an alternative so on returning the car (which had to be on the French side, again) I decided to explore my options fully, and eventually I found a solution.
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So two days later I dutifully dropped the car back to the French side with plenty of time to spare and headed up to the small French-sector check in area to see how I could get back to the Swiss side without taking a taxi. First I tried blagging my way through by saying that I had a booking but couldn’t access it on my phone. That didn’t work. I wanted to walk all the way (I had plenty of time) but that if forbidden. I talked to the hire car company who had previously mentioned a bus but the bus goes from the local town into Geneva, not from the airport. Their only advice was to hang around in the car park asking people for a lift into the local town. “It won’t take you long”, he said, “everyone’s going that way”.
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So there it was – I was stuck. Officially, the only way to leave the French sector of Geneva airport is to pay for a taxi or hitch hike. Or is it…..
After some brainstorming, including the recruitment of the car rental man to help me search on google flights, I took a expensive gamble which paid off. They would only let you through with a flight booking, so a flight booking I got. I paid 650 euros for a fully refundable ticket to London leaving in just over three hours. With the booking in hand I passed to the Geneva side in a little under a minute and promptly cancelled my ticket less than three minutes later. Voila, I was through for free!
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Interestingly, when you pass from the French sector to the Swiss, you actually walk through the baggage reclaim area, which I feel uneasy about. There’s a certain understanding when you fly that everyone with access to your bags either works there or has just landed from somewhere. You kinda feel that nobody would go to the length of actually flying just to steal a bag. In Geneva, anyone with a ticket booked for later could wander through baggage reclaim and help themselves to a bag or two. Hmm
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NOTE: The fake booking trick probably wouldn’t work the other way around (from the Swiss side to the French) since for that you need to show an arriving flight, rather than a departing one. Or perhaps it would work with Air France – not sure.
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