My husband and I were returning home from France when it happened. We had to board our flight from Terminal 2E at Charles de Gaulle. We arrived at the airport the recommended 3 hours ahead of time, checked in with Delta, cleared passport control and found ourselves entering the French controlled security checkpoint in the terminal where most flights to America originate (at least from what we could tell), with almost 2 hours to spare. The lines were so long, and so disorganized, and the baggage screeners so deliberately slow, we missed our flight.
The security line a Terminal 2E was already backed up we first got into it. And it didn't move. The lines in FRONT of us kept growing! There was a big black guy who worked for Security who wandered around doing nothing helpful and ignoring our plight as the minutes ticked away and we were in worse shape now than when we started! He did, however, bring whole groups of people on certain flights - which they were about to miss - and put them ahead of us in line!
I have never seen such a unorganized, inefficient mess in my life! First of all, they didn't have nearly enough lanes open, so the line just kept growing and growing. Their machines kept starting and stopping - for minutes at a time we saw no movement at all. And they had 2 of the most inept security screeners as I've ever seen! They went thru everything in every piece of carryon. Everything. They made you open every bag, every cosmetic bag. The woman insisted on seeing all electronics, not just the computers and cell phones. I had to dig around in my bag for an ipod, a black nano. This held us up, as well as everyone behind us. The reason the belt kept stopping was not because it wasn't working but because it had to wait for Dumb and Dumber to finish examining everything you owned before they put the bags thru the machine! Lord help you if it beeped. The security at the White House isn't as tight as this!
The French's answer to the numerous complaints from passengers? "The Americans make us do it."
I beg to differ. I've never seen that degree of minute scrutiny of virtually every passenger at any airport, foreign or domestic. I think they have some America-hating union employees at the French airport who absolutely delight in messing with us, knowing there's not a damn thing we can do about it.
We got in line at 9:15 AM. Our flight was at 11:00. We finally cleared security at 11:05, missing our flight. Two Americans just 2 people in front of us made the flight; while we had the delightful experience of looking at our plane still sitting at the gate and not being allowed to get on it. Not to worry - they would put us on another flight, leaving in almost 6 hours. But now the route and connections had changed and instead of flying Paris to Salt Lake City to Denver (odd as that sounded), we would be connecting thru Atlanta instead. Atlanta is almost as far from Paris as Salt Lake in flying time terms, but it's another 1800 miles flight home instead of 550. We got home at 2 in the morning, as opposed to 2 in the afternoon as originally scheduled. The jet lag was interminable!
Not letting me on a plane that hadn't left yet cost me 12 hours of my life that I will never get back. The jet lag was about 3 times worse than a normal return from Europe because we travelled for 26 full hours spending all of that time trapped in either an airport or a long tube being cramped and uncomfortable for hours on end.
What really peeves me the most about all of this is that causing passengers to miss their flights is a regular occurrence at Terminal 2E. A man in line with us had this same thing happen to him on his last trip a month ago. He thinks the French running the security line are deliberately torturing us. I spent almost 2 hours on my feet in a line that moved about a foot every 10 minutes. No kidding. It was torture. The airport knows it, the airlines know it, and God knows the unlucky passengers know it. But nothing is done about it.
The flight we were re-booked on left out of a different terminal, 2F, and we had to go through security again! I groaned out loud and the gate agent told me "Oh, the Americans run that terminal. It won't take long." Sure enough. When we got there only one lane was open but as the line grew just a little they immediately opened up another lane. We were through it in 10 minutes, if that. And they did NOT go thru everything in our bags, or ask to see all our electronic gadgets like those sadists in Terminal 2E. So when the French blame their incompetence and inefficiency on the Americans, call them on it.
Meanwhile, try and avoid coming home out of Chas de Gaulle.
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