There is a rail strike in Belgium on Tuesday 20 May. No Thalys trains will be running and Eurostar services will be reduced. The SNCB strike runs from Monday 22:00 to Tuesday 22:00.

I just heard about all this. I'm supposed to be landing at CDG via Iceland Air on May 22. Do any of you know if this strike is only affecting Air France? Will it affect baggage handling, and will the Roissybus from CDG still be running? Thanks.

The Roissybus is operated by the RATP. You will only find out if any are operating once you arrive.

If only a one-day sympathy strike by French rail workers, I'm okay. Otherwise, we're screwed, as we hold roundtrip TGV tickets Paris-Avignon for next week.

Great.

Has anyone here ever found him/herself stuck in a rail or other type of strike in France? What did you do? How did you adjust?

In my case, we're planning to take the train to Avignon on May 21 and return on May 24. If they're striking on the 24th, perhaps we can just keep the rental car we're getting in Avignon and drive to Paris (yikes). Of course, if they're striking on May 21, then we'd have to figure another way to Avignon.

At the moment, it appears that 67% of TGV traffic will be operating on Thursday, and the Paris metro will have almost normal service.

The situation will probably evolve before Thursday.

We land on Friday morning (May 23) at 7:15am. Should I expect the RER to be running or should I book a shuttle into Paris?

The RER B will be running on Friday. On Thursday, it is scheduled to run at 50%.

M. Kerouac--

Would you please explain what the RATP web site announcement means by "avec suspension de l'interconnexion SNCF RATP a Gare du Nord"? Does it mean RER B trains from CdG will not stop at all at GdN on Thursday?

Merci.

The RER B line is shared between the SNCF and the RATP. It is SNCF north of Gare du Nord and RATP south of Gare du Nord. In normal service, the trains continue north or south along the line with just a change of driver at Gare du Nord.

Whenever there is a strike, you have to change trains at Gare du Nord instead of just riding through -- it becomes a terminus station. So every train goes to Gare du Nord anyway. The RATP runs from the usual underground level, and the SNCF will run its trains from the surface suburban station one level up.

Thanks kerouac!

Will there be signs in Gare du Nord letting us know where to get the RER B's from, seeing as its not on the usual platform?

There will be a lot of incomprehensible annoucements in French over the loudspeakers. Maybe also in English if you're lucky.

It is quite likely that the video screens will also have the information (in French), but it is quite easy to decipher something marked "Aéroport CDG - voie 37 - 9h30."

Just wanted to let you know what happened with us on the 22nd of May...

We ended up booking easyjet flights from Paris to Nice to avoid any potential TGV problems.

Airport shuttle didn't pick us up as planned that morning (though we did call to reconfirm the previous day). So, we caught a cab to Orly from our Paris apt.

Once at Orly, we learned that our easyjet flight was cancelled due to the strike. The woman at the easyjet counter could not confirm if the evening flight would go either. Several other flights were cancelled and lines were forming at various counters. We went to the TGV counter and didn't get much better news there. We would miss our original train and the next one wasn't until that night.

We had our train tickets stamped and signed so that we can get a refund from RailEurope upon our return to the U.S.

We ended up renting a car at Europcar and drove to Nice. It took about 8.5 hours.

Meanwhile, metro and bus services were normal all day in Paris. Only the RER B was operating on a reduced schedule.

It was considered to be the least disruptive strike of the year so far.