Even when both flights are domestic, some airports do not have transit facilities at all, and the only way out of the aircraft is to landside (ex-security)

If both flights are international this can be tricky. Even if they allow airside transit you need full entry credentials to enter the country otherwise you can't board the outbound in the first place.

It would be rather weird if flight A from place 1 to place 2 was domestic, while return flight B from place 2 to place 1 was international...

I would just state "it's not possible" in the international case. I can't think of one airport where this could happen, or, country that would allow this. (Maybe some obscure faux-international corner-case like "CH to FR at Geneve" or such._

"If both your flights are international, place 2 has to allow airside transit without a visa, meaning you can go to flight B without passing through immigration" I have never seen such a thing

@Fattie Virtually every major airport outside the US offers sterile transit.

Perhaps I'm losing my mind or have lived in the US too long, I'll have to think about that.

@Fattie in a few airports with “security at the gate” like parts of SIN (and I believe AMS but I’m less familiar with it), when you exit the aircraft you end up directly in the international departures area, quite similar to what happens in the US (and many, but not all, locations elsewhere) for domestic flights. In many others the path may be more complex, and you may need to go through transit security, but you won’t cross the border or go landside.

cheers @jcaron you may need to go through transit security, but you won’t cross the border or go land side Yeah I'm probably just old and confused eh :) I'm tring to think, landing at, random example, haneda 3, so I step out the plane .. youse guys are saying that I can now actually see the other gates (ie, so next to me, planes arriving direct from seattle, frankfurt / mingle with humans from said planes, ie, I get off a flight from LA, I step out the airramp and I can see touch and shake hands with humans who just stepped out of the airramp from frankfurt/etc aircraft, and I could now i

f I had a ticket walk on to the plane now returning to frankfurt (obviously, once the arriving passengers got off, it was cleaned etc) and fly to frankfurt - again I must be losing my mind, getting senile, or just completely fail to remember these common occurences! Or there ius somne confusion of terms or something, IDK!

Just TBC when you say "but you won’t cross the border or go land side" yes, of course, obviously (I'm not THAT senile :) ) But the Q has no connection at all to that. With domestic flights you can trivially "come and go as you please" airside (ie the answer to the OPs question is "for domestic, yes, trivially and commonly") but for international I have never, ever seen that to be possible - but maybe I'm just going nuts

@Fattie Just to be clear, the setup varies quite a bit from one airport to another. Not familiar with Haneda, but if you take HK for instance (most common setup), when you exit the plane, you have two choices: go to passport control / baggage claim / customs / exit, or transfers (in both cases you are mixed with other arriving passengers). In the latter case, you just go through security (different, smaller checkpoints from those used by departing passengers), and voilà, you are in the gate area, you can go to any of the gates. In Singapore you end up very directly in the departures area.

cheers @jcaron. I think the confusion may be this. Sure, arriving at HK, you and I could (with exquisite timing) meet in the area I will describe as the: staggering high security area, with mixed passengers, arriving from various international world locations, before security (I will refer to this area as the SHSMP-BS area!). [Aside. If one "hung about" for an hour in the SHSMP-BS area, once would be arrested, and if one's excuse was "oh I'm trying top meet someone from another flight in the SHSMP-BS!" they would also be cheerfully arrested, in any airport I know of, but set that a

side). You and I could then go through one of the two or more varieties of high security one-way checkpoint (hence leaving the SHSMP-BS). We could I guess then proceed in various ways to the various departure procedures. ie after waiting the usual 1-3 hours to get through one of those two or more security concepts, to leave the SHSMP-BS. We could then as a unit go take some other flights (ie that would involve "departure area", totally unrelated to the SHSMP-BS area) and so on. This is nothing like the idea of "meeting and flying off in a domestic 'open' mixed-everyone mixed arrivals/de

parture terminal" concept. So, it could be the whole thing is (entirely mine) confusion. the process I describe here is "not possible". You "can't" (to talk plainly) (pun) "meet someone in the SHSMP-BS and fly off together" {which for me is the spirit of the question "after I arrived place 2, can I just wait at the gate and take flight B?". (To repeat you absolutely CAN do that domestic, international, simply "no" except maybe in some theoretical sense of gaming the SHSMP-BS.). So I think this is the (100% my fault) confusion. Cheers! Sorry for your time!

@Fattie: an example would be EWR<->FRA on United. When you arrive in FRA you just exit into the departure lounge of the terminal (Concourse Z in this case). There is no connection security, no boarding pass check and no immigration unless you actually go the the exit. You can meet with any passenger departing from Z (or B) who has checked in and cleared security and exit immigration. You can get get a boarding pass for your return flight online and do the final doc check at the gate. Other airports where this works form the US are VIE, ZRH, MUC, NRT etc.

@Hilmar - cheers; I guess I'm losing my mind, that's amazing. one thing to clarify, can meet with any passenger departing from Z (or B) who has checked in and cleared security and exit immigration. TBC that is not relevant to the issue at hand. The issue is can I meet with others who have just arrived, ie, exactly as I have just arrived ... ? Hence, you fly EWR (eww!) to Frankfurt, I arrive on EK45 from Dubai, and you and I are milling around together before any sort of security?

(PS I had no clue Vienna had flights from overseas !)

@Fattie: yes, you can most certainly meet with any other arriving passenger (in the connected concourse) without security or doc check. Security depends on the location you are arriving from. The US is considered "safe" for many airports, I don't know about Dubai. You underestimate VIE: It's a sizable airport serving 192 destinations. Since Austria has only 5 other passenger Airports (Salzburg, Innsbruck, Graz, Linz and Klagenfurt) we can conclude that the 187 destinations must be international :-) See flightsfrom.com/VIE

you can literally see the dep./arr. boards here, viennaairport.com/en/passengers/arrival__departure/arrivals yes! for example there's a 2x weekly from Korea etc. most are "domestic" (Euro.)

"The US is considered "safe" for many airports, I don't know about Dubai." It's sounding like "a few" incoming countries have this astounding "free flow" system amongst arrivals. I had no idea, TY. Also, hammering it down, it seems like the idea you can go to departures is simply not the case. There's nowhere on Earth you can arrive (international) and skip to a departure (international) without security. (Whereas, as mentioned numerously, it's trivial/commonplace to do that concept with domestic. Domestic arrivals/departures are freely mixed as a normal matter,)