We flew from DTW-JNB last week. We had 1 hr 25 min connection time in CDG, which made me nervous based on all of the stories I had heard about CDG. My fear was well placed!

The plane was an hour late taking off from DTW due to some technical problem. That hour was not made up in flight, so we landed an hour late. If the pilot thinks it's not safe to fly, of course he shouldn't, so although I was nervous about the delay, I wasn't upset.

The flight crew told us that the ground staff at CDG was aware of our late arrival, and that there would be agents at the gate to meet connecting passengers. I specifically asked a flight attendant about our short connection time, and she assured us that they would hold the JNB flight for us. Nothing to worry about!

As you can guess, none of this happened. We landed an hour late, then sat at the gate for 20 minutes since there was no one to open the door to the terminal! No agents were at the gate to meet us.

Once we finally got out of the plane, it was already the departure time for our connecting flight. The monitors only told us that the JNB flight was leaving from 2E, no gate information. We finally found an agent who told us the connecting gate number. For those who haven't transited through CDG before (I hadn't), terminal 2E is broken into three sections, connected by trains, so you need to know which gate to go to before finding the right train.

We got to the sub-terminal where our flight was, and the agent there refused to let us through as our boarding time had passed. She directed us to the service counter and had no information as to whether they were holding the flight or not (I had no reason to think they were at this point). I checked the flight status once we got to the lounge and the JNB flight left 45 minutes late. So maybe they were holding the flight, but there was no way we could have gotten there!

At the service counter, they booked us on the JNB flight that evening, twelve hours later. They gave us meal vouchers for lunch and dinner. With new boarding passes in hand, we went through security and then up to the lounge, which is nice enough but quite a dull place to spend twelve hours. When we explored the terminal to look for a place to eat, all they have is some takeaway type food. There are no restaurants for transit passengers in 2E! And once we had passed through security, they would not let us out. So the meal vouchers were useless.

We had a hotel reservation in JNB, and flights to CPT the next morning. I emailed our travel agent, and she told us it was too late to get a refund for the hotel, so we lost 100% of that cost. Also if the flight landed at JNB on time, we would have two hours to get to our flight to CPT (on a separate ticket, so Air France had no liability if we missed it). We changed our CPT flights to leave two hours later at a cost of $150.

Our flight to JNB that evening was delayed by almost an hour too, but landed on time. We went through immigration, got our bag, and got to the domestic terminal barely in time to catch the earlier flight, although we took the later one anyway. So I'm considering that $150 as travel insurance.

I was thoroughly disappointed in Air France's ground staff. There was a serious lack of communication between the flight crews and the staff at CDG. I'm going to try to get Air France to reimburse us for the cost of the JNB hotel but I'm not hopeful.

On the way back, everything was on time, and we made the 2E connection in 45 minutes. But if for some reason I have to transit CDG again, I would never want to do it with less than three hours. I don't anticipate ever choosing to transit CDG though.

I was looking forward to taking the daytime flight over Africa, too!