Paris’ Charles de Gaulle International Airport (CDG) Terminal 1 is an antiquated, poorly designed, poorly maintained, ten-floor high terminal. It’s the worst terminal building I’ve used in the last decade.
While coming into France via this gateway is OK, leaving is a horrible, frustrating, unpleasant experience, which leaves many with a very bad taste in their mouths about France.
Coming into Paris, once in the terminal, we found immigration easily. It was well manned. The officer was pleasant, quick and professional.
Our luggage arrived in the baggage carousel within minutes of arriving at baggage claim. The signage, directing passengers to the cabs at Terminal 1 was awful. They direct you well past the right door. We had to walk back several doors to get a cab.
Trying to fly home from CDG is a frustrating, time consuming experience filled with slow moving lines, too much running around the airport, poor signage, poor facilities, poor management, and outrageous security personnel.
If you take a taxi to this terminal, you’ve got to tell your driver which airline you’re taking and hope they know at which door to drop you off. The signs outside the doors are useless. If you’re at the wrong door, you might be in for a very long hike to your airline’s check-in. At our entrance, there was no mention of US Airways, even though its check-in lines were directly inside the door.
We entered the check-in line. After questioning, we checked-in our luggage and got a “boarding chit,” not a boarding pass. We had to go to another line to pay our French Exit Fee first.
We traipsed to the Exit Fee line. When it was our turn, we had the Euros, but you had to pay with exact change. We paid by credit card. Why the exit fee can’t be included in the price of the ticket, I have no idea. They gave us our boarding passes.
With boarding passes in hand, it was time to visit the VAT office to stamp our refund form. You can’t get your form approved until you’re leaving Europe. You’ve got to have your purchases at the office in person and your boarding pass to get your form stamped. That means you can’t pack your purchases in your checked-in luggage. Finding the office via signage was impossible. I had to get directions from two people because the first one sent me to the old office which is closed.
Once the form was approved, we went right over to Amex to get our money. Another line, but at least Amex was next to the VAT office.
With boarding passes in hand, and a VAT refund in our pockets, we proceeded upstairs to immigration. This is accomplished by going up a spongy, dangerous conveyor belt. One was closed. They’re so steep it’s a problem. An older person behind us lost her grip on a carry-on and it almost hit the man behind her. Fortunately, he was able to catch it.
Immigration was a breeze. We were now at a cross-roads. Duty free shopping was on our right and surprisingly empty, and the airport lounge we had used in the past was above. The problem was, it had taken and hour and a half to get to this point, but we still hadn’t gone through security, which had been moved to the gate area since the last time we were at CDG. We had an hour before boarding, but didn’t know how long security would take. We headed down the long conveyor belt to security.
At our gate area there were three wide bodied jets leaving within 15 minutes of each other, yet security only had one line open. There were about 60 people ahead of us. It took 45 minutes to get to the head of the line.
I put my liquids’ baggie, shoes, cell phone, jacket, hat, and photo vest, etc. in trays, and my computer in a separate tray. Before going through the metal detector, they made me put my passport, boarding pass, paper money, and wallet loose in one of the trays. I thought that outrageous. Even so, the metal detector went off, as it did for everyone. They wanded us all. They gave me a full pat down and got way too friendly between my legs. At least I was through then.
Total time from arrival to the gate — 2.5 hours. Ridiculous!!!
At the gate, at least 10 to 15 percent of the passengers were standing. All the seats were taken. There is clearly not enough space for passengers to sit if more than three of gates in the area are in use.
The French need to replace CDG Terminal 1, post-haste. They need to improve signage throughout the airport, and they need to drastically improve airport security management.
Pingback: Tweets that mention Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport: OK arrival, terrible departure -- Topsy.com
Pingback: Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport: OK arrival, terrible departure