Altenrhein Airport to Lech Transfers From €300 per vehicle

Altenrhein Airport to Lech am Arlberg is about 118 km by road and takes around 1 hour 30 minutes. A private transfer with Alpinum Taxi costs from €300 per vehicle, one way — not per person — for up to eight passengers with luggage and ski equipment.

Airport transfers on this route are priced the same in both directions, and the price covers both vignettes, Swiss and Austrian, skis and snowboards, child seats, and the drive to the door of your accommodation. We take no deposit and hold no card details, and you can cancel free of charge up to 24 hours before pickup.

Alpinum Taxi is a taxi company based in St. Anton am Arlberg. We do not pass work on to anyone: the cars are our own — Mercedes Minibus 4x4 and VW Caravelle Minibus 4x4 — and so are the drivers, experienced local drivers who know these roads.

Altenrhein or St. Gallen — the same airport

The airport is officially Airport St. Gallen–Altenrhein, code ACH. It stands at Altenrhein on the Swiss shore of Lake Constance and is named after St. Gallen, the city about twenty kilometres inland. If your ticket says St. Gallen, it is the same place and the same hall — and this is the right page.

The shortest drive to the Arlberg

Of the six airports we serve, Altenrhein is the closest to Lech: 118 kilometres. The reason is where it stands — at the mouth of the Rhine where it meets Lake Constance, which is to say at the entrance of the valley the drive follows anyway.

Which resort the transfer serves

Lech lies at 1,450 metres in its own valley, eight kilometres beyond Zürs on the Flexenstraße. It is the largest of the four on the Vorarlberg side, with its own centre, its own river and Oberlech on the terrace above it.

Of the six airports we serve, Altenrhein is the closest to Lech. It shares the Ski Arlberg pass with St. Anton, St. Christoph, Stuben and Zürs — around 300 kilometres of piste and 85 lifts on one ticket.

Skiing here runs from early December to late April. What the skiing means for the journey in is in our guide to skiing on the Arlberg, and the rest is in what you need to know about the Arlberg.

Winter and summer transfers

Most of our Altenrhein transfers run in winter, when the resort is full and the skiing is on. Summer transfers are quieter, but it is the same road and the same price, and the same private transfers carry walkers and cyclists in July that carry skiers in February.

What a ski transfer carries

A ski transfer is not simply a taxi with skis in it. The rear ski rack takes skis and boards outside the cabin, so eight people and eight ski bags travel in one vehicle instead of two. If you are collecting hired equipment on the way, tell us and we will stop at the ski shop in the resort before your accommodation. What to bring and what travels free is set out on the luggage page.

Most of our winter work is ski transfers. From Altenrhein we drive to all five Arlberg villages: Stuben, St. Christoph, Zürs and St. Anton — around 300 kilometres of piste and 85 lifts, on one pass.

Your driver waits in the arrivals hall at Altenrhein, holding a sign with your name on it. It is the smallest airport we drive to: a single hall, with the car parks directly in front of it. A few steps from the door to the vehicle — no walk through two terminals and no train underneath.

We track the flight number you give us when booking. If the flight lands late the pickup moves with it, at no extra charge and without you having to do anything.

In Lech itself we stop at the hotel door. There are no closed streets in the village and we drive into every part of it — Lech, Omesberg, Stubenbach, Zug — so the drive ends where you are staying.

Oberlech is the exception, and it is worth understanding before you arrive. The terrace above the village is car-free in winter, and it is reached by the gondola from the valley station. We set you and your luggage down there, the staff load the bags onto trolleys, and you ride up while they follow. With a lift pass the gondola is included, and it runs from seven in the morning until one at night.

Hotels with their own tunnel from the goods hall are the second case: for those we drive up the steep road to the hall, where a barrier with a bell opens, and your hotel collects you inside with an electric cart and takes you through the tunnel to the door. Tell us the hotel name when you book and we will know which of the two applies.

There are four realistic options for getting from Airport St. Gallen–Altenrhein to Lech, and which of them is the affordable one depends entirely on how many of you are travelling.

Lech has no railway station. The nearest is Langen am Arlberg, at the bottom of the Flexenstraße, and the climb above it has to be driven whatever you arrive by. A rail journey from Altenrhein also means changing between the Swiss and Austrian networks at the border.

Rail here also brings something our German routes do not: at the border you move between the Swiss and the Austrian networks. With light baggage that is manageable; with a ski bag and a boot bag each, the changes are what decide it, and the last stretch of mountain road is still there at the end.

A rental car earns its keep if you plan to drive during the stay. If it would sit outside the hotel all week, a private transfer saves you the winter driving across a border, two vignettes, and the return of the car on the morning of the flight home.

The bus has the most changes on this route and the tightest timetable. It can be cheap; it is never direct.

The four options, side by side

Of the four options, the private transfer is the only one with no change of vehicle: one car, one price, your door. The bus is the cheapest option and the slowest. A rental car pays off only if you intend to drive during the stay rather than park for a week. And the train ends at Langen am Arlberg, not in Lech.

Ski groups rarely find the comparison close. Four people travelling with skis pay one fare between them for a private transfer, and every other option charges each of them separately and asks them to carry the equipment between vehicles.

For a flight from Altenrhein we leave Lech three and a half hours before departure. That covers the 118-kilometre drive, the border and the time you need at the airport, all together. There is nothing to add on top — tell us your flight number and we will give you the pickup time.

For Innsbruck it is three hours, for Friedrichshafen four, for Memmingen four and a half, for Zurich five and for Munich six. Altenrhein sits just behind Innsbruck, because the drive is short and the hall is small.

The return costs the same as the way in: from €300 per vehicle, both vignettes and ski equipment included. We collect you from your accommodation at any hour, including before daylight. Booking the return at the same time as the arrival is the convenient way to do it: one message, one fixed price, both directions.