AF wants me to have a 50 minute connection. Do-able? I don't care what they think "legal" means. If it's not feasible, then I'll just do a stopover and not worry about it. Thoughts?

If AF says they can do it, they'll take care of you -- whisk you off the first plane and rush you to the second. You baggage will try to catch up.

it's a direct flight back home from there, so if my baggage doesn't come right along, at least i'll be at my home airport and not roaming along trying to speak mangled french.

i'd be coming in from athens, so would customs to too bad?

Greece is part of the Schengen zone, so there is no customs to clear at CDG. If you remain in the transit zone, you may not even need to clear security again. Your baggage should make it -- it's coming off a smaller plane and going onto a bigger plane. The reverse is more problematic.

Sorry, but kerouac is wrong on this one.

Exactly because Greece is Schengen, the ATH-CDG flight is like a domestic one. At CDG the OP will need to go from most likely 2D to 2E. Clear immigration (to exit Schengen) and security.

With a tight connection, AF often has someone to wait for you at the gate, but not always. And the problem is that except for NYC, most cities in the US don't get that many flights a day from CDG. If your flight is already the last and you miss it, you'll be stuck in Paris overnight.

Anyways, it's doable, but risky. Know what you're getting into.

The poster asked about customs, not immigration. Obviously, there will be a 2-second glance at the passport on the way out of the continent.

kerouac knows perfectly well that:
- the Schengen system has nothing to do with Customs,
- most Americans use "Customs" to mean passport control
- Schengen's absurd requirement for outgoing passport inspection may only involve a two second glance at a passport - but can often take ten valuable minutes to queue for.

flanneruk - Outbound passport inspection is absurd? Very interesting. Most countries in the world have this absurd practice, with notable exception of the UK, Canada and the US.

kerouac - You are still trying make it sounds like you just step of the plane and go next door to a gate (with a little "passport inspection" in between). I sincerely hope that's not the impression the OP is getting.

It's widely known that at times, going through exit immigration at CDG means many minutes in a line.

Air France once told us that we would make our connection at CDG, we diddn't we missed it and had to take the next flight. We had 50 minutes to connect but got stuck in immigration!

I just had this issue regarding a flight from Toulouse to Paris and a connection with the JFK flight; there was about an hour and AF said it was ok. If I missed it they would take care of me and put me on the next flight. But I chose to book myself on the next flight, even with a 4 hour waiting time...who wants the hassle of your luggage not making it? And the chance of getting some horrible middle seat on an already full flight? Too much agitation for me..I would rather hang around the duty free for a few hours!

Relaated question: Years ago I remember a supermarket in the basement of one of the terminals; I think it was a Casino. Is there still a food market anywhere at the CDG airport?

There is still a supermarket in the underground passage linking terminal A-C to B-D.

You are supposed to go to the front of the line when time is running short. AF and other personnel spend quite of bit of time dragging their passengers out of the security and immigration lines to speed them through when necessary.

Thanks, Kerouac. So I guess I made an error in refusing to take the flight with the tight connection. Too late to change now, so I will certainly visit the supermarket and have a look around. I will have from about noon until 4pm.

What happend when your bags do not make the flight? Do they still deliver them to your house the next day?

Reminds me of a time when I was returning from Lima and had the bright idea of packing my house keys in my luggage. I don't have to tell you what happened, do I? Instead of going home and waiting for them to deliver the bags, I had to hang around all night at LaGuardia (connection in Miami) for the luggagge cause I could not get into my apartment without my keys!!

Well, in Paris, I have had Air France deliver bags to my door more times than I care to remember. Only one time was it for an Air France flight, but Air France seems to have the baggage delivery contract for all of the other airlines -- so they have delivered for Delta, Cathay Pacific, Saudi Arabian, American and others. The good thing was that in all of my lost baggage cases, they were able to locate my missing bag(s) before I left CDG and confirm that they would be on the next days's flight or that they were already on a later flight the same day.

I do not want people to think that airline baggage handling is all that terrible -- I am an airline employee and often get on flights in the last 5 minutes (or not). More often than not, the opposite happens: my bags arrive a day or two before me, so don't ever believe it when airlines swear than since 9/11 no bags are ever put on a flight if the passenger is not on board. Every airline does it every day.

Unfrotunately, what Kerouac says "may" be true sometimes but not always. Each time I have gone thru CDG we have parked on the tarmac taken a long bus ride and forced to go thru 2 passport secreenings on our way to the US.

Each time we asked AF people for help and were denied both by the onboard personnel and at passport control. They pushed to the back of a very long line when I asked for their help.

No one escorted us or offeres assistance. We missed a flight despite a 75 minute time frame. Our luggage on our flight to Nice arrived 3 days later.

You may be very lucky with 50 minutes but many peole have missed connections with longer periods of time. Is it worth the chance?