Paris Airport
We will be on the London/Paris trip in May. Curious to know what the CDG airport is like. I’ve heard it’s a difficult airport to maneuver. We have an 11:45 am flight to Boston and want to make sure we get there in enough time to make our flight. We will have one bag to check
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Although large, I find it an easy airport to fly in and out of. Standard protocol is to arrive at least three (3) hours before your flight. You can go to the airport’s website and familiarize yourself with the layout.
We just came through Paris yesterday. It's pretty easy to find your way. Plenty of signs and people to ask for assistance.
Someone on one of the Tauck facebook pages posted this today "I arrived in Paris this morning and got through border control at de Gaulle in a little over an hour, so it wasn’t too bad. I know there has been some concern about long delays with the new system."
From our experiences, the biggest problem with CDG is when you arrive from the US enroute to another (Shengen) country. We had to go through immigration then pickup and recheck our bags. Despite the room being full and wicket lines being long, only a few stations were open. It appears there were sufficient agents to man most if not all stations but only a few were open at any given time to maintain some artificial and undetermined wait time. This caused everyone a lot of discontent. There was an agent monitoring the line who occasionally asked if anyone had a rapidly approaching departure time. If the agent was satisfied it would be close, he/she would move the person to the head of the line. As our time got short I asked if we could move up but was denied A few minutes later the agent asked us again and we were moved to the head of the line. That line monitor had a lot of power. We still had to hustle to catch our flight!
Having to claim baggage and re-check is a function of how the flights were ticketed. If all components of the route are on one ticket, your baggage goes all the way through to the final destination.
For those interested, an easy internet search will provide more detail than my summary here.
As Mimitravels indicated, signage is plentiful and intuitive.
Travel9 - I forgot to mention that your tour director will confirm your return flights and will advise the time the car service will transport you to the airport, whether you leave immediately after the tour or from the Tauck designated post-tour hotel. Enjoy your trip!
It can also happen if the agent doesn't tag the bags all the way to your final airport during check in. Happened to us in Glasgow and was a big pain when we arrived at LAX and Delta didn't have any employees at the recheck location. I think the agent didn't understand the process or claiming and immediately giving bags back to the airline for follow on flights. My fault for not paying closer attention.