Patty

Yes MCT for an AF Schengen to AF non-Schengen connection at CDG is 60 min and will be from 2F to 2E with passport control in between. 2F is across from 2E (no reason to take a shuttle) with the possibility of a further quick train ride between the halls of 2E.

john183

We're back from our trip (had a GREAT time) and I hope to post a trip report soon but thought I would let you know what happened with our flights. Delta had changed the flight times on each of our last three European trips and I was afraid they might shorten the 1:35 connection time in option 1 so I booked option 2.

And sure enough, not even a week after I booked it, Delta changed the time our flight left MRS. But instead of shortening the connection times, they lengthened them by 25 minutes. Now having two hours for option 1, I called Delta and tried to switch my flight but no luck - they wanted to charge a huge change fee. Oh well, we decided we would just have a nice long lunch at a nice restaurant in CDG while we waited.

It was very easy to get to MRS from Saint Remy and it was quick and easy to find Europcar (which turned out to be right next to our departure terminal 4) and drop the car keys in the key slot. I had allowed plenty of extra time to get lost along the way and/or have trouble finding the rental car return but it was all super easy.

You can't check luggage at MRS until 2 hours before your flight so we had a coffee until we could check our luggage then relatively quickly made it through security. It took a little extra time because they really do enforce the liquids in a plastic bag policy. They made us open our bags and they started putting all our liquids in plastic bags but we had so many they finally gave up and just told us to go on through.

It was a short on-time flight to CDG. We arrived at terminal 2F, took the short walk to the K gates in 2E and started an unsuccessful mission of looking for a nice restaurant. The best we could find was some kind of food court with bad food and bad wine. I’m not sure where we would have had to go to find a decent restaurant but no one we asked seemed to know how we could get to one. I’m guessing we would have had to go outside of security but after the liquids debacle at MRS we did not want to do that. We read, napped, charged all our iDevices and the wait was not too bad. They started boarding 30 or 40 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave so that helped shorten the time too.

Thanks again for all your responses. I think I would have booked option 1 if the time would have been two hours but 1:35 just seemed too risky – especially with Delta’s history of changing flight times on me. In this case, because the flight time change actually lengthened the connection time, we would have easily made it to our next flight but it could have gone the other way. I guess when it comes down to making these kinds of decisions I’m not much of a gambler anymore. A couple of hours cushion seemed better than the possibility of missing a tight connection.

Christina

Thanks for the followup, I know what you mean about risk, you never know what's going to happen with those flight times.

kerouac

Thanks for getting back to us. I still maintain that when you are on the same airline or the same airline alliance (Skyteam), it is the airline's problem when anything goes wrong and nothing for the passenger to worry about. In case of flight delays or missed flights, you have a greatly increased chance of being upgraded or royally compensated for the inconvenience. When they have to rebook you on another airline, sometimes you arrive even earlier than on your original schedule.

Naturally, such information is useless for worry warts (my father) or for anybody who has planned things so carefully (arrival pickup, long term car park details, having to go to work the next day...) that it is out of the question that anything can change in the schedule. But people who make a travel schedule with extra time in it get to benefit from all of these other things.

greg

john183,
Would you mind posting empirical data for others doing the similar transfer in the future?
From the time you got off the plane from MRS, how many minutes did it take to get to the 2E security and how much more to be done with the security and be at the boarding gate for your ATL flight if you did not stop by somewhere else?

john183

greg - Since we had so much time to kill we wandered around quite a bit so I'm sort of guessing at how long it would have taken if we would have gone straight to our gate but it would not have been long at all. I'm not sure which F gate we arrived at but it was easy to follow the signs to the K gates at 2E and I think it would have taken maybe 10-15 minutes (give or take a couple of minutes) to get to the security area for Hall K. There was no one in line so we were through almost immediately. Our gate (K 41) was one of the first gates we came to once we were in Hall K so maybe another 5 minutes to actually get to our gate.

Knowing what I know now - if I were to do this same trip again - I would probably choose the short connection time option. When I booked the flight, 1:35 seemed tight and I wasn't sure how easy and quick it would be to get to the K gates in 2E from 2F. Hopefully someone will correct me if my recollections are not correct.

To kerouac's point, I do believe Delta would have taken care of us if something would have gone wrong. We had a medical situation earlier this year that required several trips back and forth from Atlanta to Houston and Delta was incredibly helpful. I know Delta gets bashed a lot but I'm a fan - they have been good to me over the years.

Christina

I"m a worrywart, also--not that I don't think the airline will have to get me someplace, but a longer change time may outweigh the potential hassle if that happens.

I would probably have booked a 1:30 changeover at CDG, though, but I know the terminal well and have made even 1 hr changeovers there. Especially if it were going home, as then even if my bags didn't get transferred, it wouldn't cause a problem in your vacation, because you are going home.

I was delayed a day at CDG once due to American Airline's crummy planes (mechanical problems and no other plane nearby they could get within 24 hours), and sure, they put us up at the Hilton, and got us on a plane the next day -- but it made me take an extra day vacation which costs a lot of money. For most people, even if it isn't a matter of that you have to be at work that day or something terrible happens, the cost of a vacation day is not cheap in terms of your salary. That's a cost or benefit you have lost when you didn't want to. Each one of my vacation days is worth about $250 to me.

If you aren't working, of course, that isn't an issue, either, and then I wouldn't care so much at all.

But when I don't know about an airport, or if I'm driving with a rental car, I also like to leave extra time. I don't enjoy worrying about whether I'm going to make it or not, etc.