Paris CDG Airport

If departing CDG allow at least 5 hrs! My husband and I flew out of CDG to the USA. Prior to leaving we had to stand in the Detaxe line we were fairly organized and only needed our receipts and papers stamped. Arrived at the airport 3 hrs 20 mins prior to departure time. We found the detaxe line and saw 100 people in line already - with only 2 detaxe officers. We painfully stood in line for over 2 hours! Our only saving grace was that we checked in online. Ticketing agent gave us first class passes to get through security line. We rushed to the front of the line to find one agent stamping passports. We got to our gate by the time they were boarding the 2nd round of passengers.

Having managed to avoid this awful airport for many years I was re-routed via CDG after a technical delay. It's worse than I recall worse than my low expectations and I can think of nothing positive to say about it. Truly the Achilles heel of what might otherwise be only a third rate airline it makes Air France a fifth rate one. I understand that the airport is out of date and poorly maintained but there is no excuse for the obstructive and belligerent attitude of just about everyone who works there.

This is truly one of the worst airports in the world. Even worse than JFK and Mumbai and I thought that was hard to beat. I have used T1 2ACEF and S3 and they are all horrible excuses for airport terminals. The airport design is poor and disorganized. Extremely unclean rude staff and unhelpful. Never ending lines for check-in security passport control customs taxi (even when flying in first or business). Shopping virtually non existent and a few bad restaurants with high prices and poor food. Only good thing is that there never seems to be a line for takeoff.

Travelled from ATL to BLR with connections through CDG. Worst airport experience ever. Even worse was the return journey through CDG. The inter terminal bus service is a joke the staff are rude and take pleasure in pretending not to understand English.

I have been travelling through CDG for 22 years and dread the experience. If you arrive at a busy time it always seems to take forever to get through security and passport control. You can wait up to 30 mins for a transfer bus to arrive then take up to 20 mins to change terminals. I regularly take a bus transfer from 2E to 2B and takes 50 mins for this. Staff at the Air France 2E transfer desks are extremely slow I timed them one day and the average was 10 mins to deal with each person. Frustrating when all I needed was to get a boarding pass because the automatic check-in ones were not working. Food and drinks in CDG are overpriced profiteering from a captive clientele on a grand scale. Overall a depressing dirty and poorly managed airport and if another European hub offered me the same connections I would avoid it like the plague.

Paris Airport CDG is a joke. Our flight arrived 2 hours before the connecting flight but me we missed it! We arrived at 6.20 3 bus rides of more than 10 minutes each which take you to a gate only to find that you are there to wait for a connecting bus with a wait before it comes. There are queues poor signs and staff who refuse to speak English. As we were taxiing away we saw our luggage being left behind we told the cabin crew who to assured us our luggage was on board only to reach our destination and find our luggage missing.

Airport staff on the ground are incompetent. We had to wait on the plane 20 mins because there were no stairs ready when the plane got to the gate. Then a wait for the bus. This is an international airport and they need to able to assist international travellers. Nobody knew what was going on and they all gave me different directions. In any event I would do anything in my power to avoid this airport. It is not worth the stress and anger required to go through Paris CDG.

Overall a rather tiresome confusing airport that I do not like to use for various reasons: frequent strikes affect operations and/or transport links to airport. Ground staff at Air France were not helpful and seemed to make a point of being so but that's just 'Air Chance' and their wretched attitude problem. General cleanliness is poor and there may be personal safety/comfort concerns (over 150 homeless people living in CDG make for a disquieting spectacle). Shopping options poor/boring.

As many others have said it is a pain to come from a long-haul flight and have to take a 15 min bus ride around the airport then wait for bags for 20-30 min. Leaving the airport is fine with not many lines (considering the volume of traffic) and numerous cafes and quality duty free shops. Access to Paris is very easy with the metro and buses (no need for the hefty taxi prices). Overall quite good experience if you remove the almost certain bus ride.

We arrived early for our return flight to London so decided to go through passport control and into the departure hall and wait there. The wait at passport control was not bad although the passport officers seemed disinterested. The main problem occurred when we got to the departure hall we had thought we would get a bite to eat however after a long search we discovered there are no cash machines or anywhere to get money. The toilets were dirty and resembled a couple of portacabins stuck together this is despite an abundance of cleaning staff who seemed to be doing very little.