Getting to Davos: Zurich Airport, Trains, and Snow Delays

The real routes into Davos from Zurich, and what can go wrong in winter.

Last updated: August 2026

The route that actually works

Fly into Zurich, take the train to Landquart, change there for the line up the valley to Davos. That's it — that's the route almost everyone uses, and it's the one I'd tell you to book. Two and a half to three hours door to door, on a good day. Buy the ticket on the SBB app before you land so you're not figuring it out with cold hands on the platform.
If you're coming from elsewhere in Europe or the UK, Basel is a real alternative — you change at Chur or Landquart onto the same line, just from the other direction. Add an hour or so versus the Zurich route.

The trains themselves are reliable — this is Switzerland. What goes wrong is the margin around them. If your connection at Landquart is tight and your first train is even ten minutes late, you can watch your onward train leave the platform without you. Build in more time than the schedule technically requires, especially on your first trip in.
Snow doesn't usually cancel trains, but it does slow them, and it makes the standing-around parts of the journey — waiting on an open platform, dragging luggage through slush — genuinely unpleasant. Dress like you're going outside for twenty minutes, because you are.

Every first-timer with a budget considers a private car from Zurich instead. Don't. During Annual Meeting week the roads up the valley get slow with traffic and closures, so a drive that should take two hours can run well past that — and unlike the train, a car is stuck in whatever the road is doing.
Without a pre-arranged pass, most vehicles don't get near the centre of town that week regardless. If you're set on driving, have whoever's arranging it confirm access in advance, or just plan to drop the car at Landquart and take the train up like everyone else.

This line runs often enough that a missed connection is an annoyance, not a crisis — there's another train, not another day. But don't schedule a meeting for the hour you land, and don't cut your first connection close just because the app says you technically have four minutes. Four minutes with luggage, on ice, in an unfamiliar station, is not four minutes.

Private operators do run helicopter transfers between Zurich and Davos during the week, and when the weather cooperates it genuinely cuts the trip to well under an hour. The catch is exactly that — when it cooperates. Alpine fog or a heavy snow system grounds flights with no warning and no reschedule button.
If someone's arranging one for you, keep a live train ticket as the actual plan and treat the helicopter as the upgrade, not the plan. I've seen people bank entirely on a slot that never took off.

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