I'm booking my family's plane tickets for our trip this summer, and I'm hoping someone can help me with a question about customs. I'm looking at flying from Venice to Paris and from Paris back to the U.S. When we connect in Paris, do we need to leave time to go through customs? Or do we stay in the airport security bubble and just go through customs in the U.S.? I apologize if this seems like a silly question, but I don't want to leave us short on time.

Are you planning to spend time in Paris? Why not fly directly to the US?
If you're changing carriers and your bags are not checked through to final destination, you will need time to pick up your bags and clear airport security again.

Venice to Paris is considered a "domestic" flight since both Italy and France are in the Schengen treaty zone. Hence no immigration check (passport) or customs (inspection of goods).

The US Gov't requires rigorous passenger name/passport screening & security check, so you DO need to leave time to go through airline passport check (not gov't) and security.

I would love to fly directly back to the U.S. but I can't find a direct flight to Boston. I would have thought that there would be flights from Venice to New York, and then we could catch a shuttle to Boston, but that's not what Orbitz is showing me.

Since I am determined to travel light, we won't be checking any bags. But I know that even if you only have carryon luggage, customs can still take a while. One option for flights gives us 1 hours and 40 minutes between flights in Paris and I'm not sure that it is enough time.

Delta flies non-stop Venice to JFK. Leaves Venice at 1:10pm and arrives at JFK at 4:45pm. Check delta.com.

I like to use kayak.com or itasoftware.com to serach for flight options.

You go through customs on arrival in the US (inspection of goods being brought into the country), not at a connecting airport in Europe.

The direct Delta flight between JFK and VCE goes in each direction four days a week, so you may not be choosing the days of the week that it is available. I took it in each direction last week. The JFK-VCE flight #86 departed at 6:50PM. The VCE-JFK flight #87 departed at 10:30AM.

ellenem- Hope you had a marvelous time!

J62 is right.

2 years ago I flew from Venice thru Paris then on to the US. There will be no customs in Paris, but as already mentioned be prepared for security checks.

Your bags can be checked thru to the US so you will not have to collect your bags and recheck them in Paris.