Originally Posted by
elsenor
Unlike my experience a couple weeks ago with needing to pass through security and passport control for my 2E(K) --> 2F connection, ~10 days ago we had only passport 2E(L) --> 2F. We had nearly the identical experience to you hhdl as we only walked down the L gates, turned right, then the long corridor until we waited ~8min to get through the facial recognition passport gates at 2E <-> 2F. Which makes no sense since we had essentially an identical itinerary as my previous (USA -> CDG -> Schengen flight) one that required security check AND took FAR FAR longer. I was absolutely sweating our 70min connection time knowing my previous experience and the CDG website listing both security and passport for all 2E -> 2F transfers.
It's luck of the draw, really. Hopefully they're allocating arrivals with this in mind.
Note how the western side gates on 2E(L) are connected to each other: that's the corridor elsenor and I went down. The southwest side of 2E(L) has a similar structure, though I don't know if it would allow a clean connection to 2F.
If it's just the northwest, that's 3 or 4 magic gates. If they're preferentially giving these gates to clean arrivals, then being on the first 3 or 4 clean arrivals in the morning is a good shot. From today's arrivals, that's AF23 and AF63 from JFK, AF257 from SIN, and AF333 from BOS. AF271 (HND) and AF15 (JFK) have outside shots at being in the first 3-4 as well. Beyond that, it's really difficult to predict depending on equipment rotations etc.
JFK/SIN/BOS/HND probably rank reasonably high on the list of high-$$$/mile J destinations, conveniently.