Paris, Charles de Gaulle Airport Review

Good Points
Paris Charles de Gaulle airport makes you laugh with other travelers who are all saying 'this airport is so screwed up!'A perfect example of French engineering.

Bad Points
Absolutely idiotic layout, spaghetti layout, hundreds of buses, delays, dangerous ceilings, shops that open late, lack of correct signs, nobody knows what to do, two to four workers to do one job.

General Comments
Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris is something to completely avoid. My wife and I had no idea how bad an airport could be until we had connecting flights here in April 2006. I think they should call this airport "Spaghetti" because of how everything moves here. It is anything but a streamlined and efficient way to get people from place to place.



Our transatlantic flight landed and taxied it seemed for 15 minutes after going round half the airport and buildings there. It seems that all the flights are parked here there and everywhere where a space can be found. We were herded into a fleet of buses from there. Instead of an express ride to a terminal on the bus, we were exhausted by the stop and start driving around the airport for another 3 miles. We must have stopped 20 times, and even had to wait for planes crossing the road.



Finally we reached a terminal building, only to find little there but confusing signs and poorly designed information screens about connecting flights. Our connecting flight was in a different terminal, which must be reached by taking yet another bus ride around the airport.



The confusing nature of the airport continued as we tried to decipher where we were supposed to go to catch our next plane. Numbers and signs pointing up and down and left and right were completely ridiculous. Fortunately, an older French couple warned us not to stand in one line because it was a chartered flight line. The French couple said the airport was absolutely confusing, even to the French, and none of the other French airports were so poorly thought out. We went to another line where the woman told us we were wrong to be in as well, but looked at our tickets examining information on her sheet 10 times over front and back, then pointed to where she thought we were to go. This was all in the space of 30 feet.



The terminal building looked unsafe, and I was worried more of the ceiling would collapse. There is a huge expanse of concrete above most of this terminal area, which had some soft of wire or string holding parts of it up. I noticed 2-4 people doing almost every job there with the exception of the bathroom attendant. One woman came in to clean both bathrooms while travelers were using them.



Our return flight through Charles De Gaulle was even worse. We were made sick by having to run from plane to plane, jump into special vans to shorten the trip by about 40 minutes from the plane to the terminal, but still had to run a half mile or more, go through 2 separate security checks and deal with an unhelpful bus driver. The inefficiency of this airport, it's layout and design is very very poor!



Don't use this airport unless you have to, and if you have a connecting flight, you'll need at least 2 hours preferably 3 hours to find your way to and from your aeroplanes.