[Idyllchat] CDG airport

[Jerry Clancy]

Donna,

If I've flown through CDG once I've done it a couple of dozen times, 
as I had to work in Paris for many brief periods over many years (boo 
hoo). For at least half of these times it was the point of 
termination or origin of the flight. Rarely a problem in this 
situation. As you may have gathered by most of the comments, the 
problems tend to occur with the "fly through" situation. This, as 
someone has already pointed out, is due to tight schedules, a bad 
layout and, in my opinion, a terrible busing situation (between 
terminals), problems made worse by the collapse of one of their 
terminals sometime ago (when, of course, we were last flying 
through). I have never been fond of the European "bus 'em around the 
tarmac" approach to aviation. Guess it was cheaper than building 
proper terminals.

The majority of my flights through CDG were OK, particularly when I 
had considerable time between connections. The concern with CDG is 
that the ratio of bad to good flights through it is higher than at 
any other airport I've flown through, domestic included. But it's 
still on the order of 1 in 4 or so in my experience. You should do OK 
with a two-hour connection time. Just do your homework on the 
terminal layout so you know where you have to get to. And, as you 
say, don't worry about things you can't control.

You also mention Northwest. I lived in the Twins for almost 10 years 
back in the '70s and '80s and, as locals, we loved calling it 
Northworst, as it was often the only choice you had. However, my 
experience with the airline, at least back then, was always good to 
excellent and I racked up a lot of miles with the carrier, including 
overseas flights. So stay positive.

Jerry

At 05:28 PM 4/13/2007, alan rudolph wrote:

>Oh my gosh, after reading all the comments ( all by the way negative 
>) about changing planes in Paris, I quickly got out my itinerary and 
>checked out where we will be changing planes on the way back from 
>Venice and guess where it will be.....yep, CDG!!!!!  I am pretty 
>sure I knew that all along but just didn't give it much thought.
>
>What I really NEED to hear right now is someone ( even one will do ) 
>who had a positive experience there!!!!  We will be leaving Venice 
>at 10:05am and arriving  at CDG at 11:55am. Then we will be leaving 
>Paris at 2:00pm for Detroit.  I am going to try and not stress out 
>at this point ( there's nothing I can do about it anyway, is there? 
>)  We are leaving Venice via Air France and then boarding Northwest for home.
>
>Donna
>Michigan