I just flew through Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris twice in the past month. Both times, I was simply connecting between Air France flights. I was going from North America to Barcelona and back. Much to my surprise, I had to clear customs/immigration as well as security both ways!! Given that all my flights were into and out of same terminal (2F), I definitely didn’t expect this. I understand going through customs/immigration the minute I landed at CDG from my transatlantic flight, but why did I have to get pushed out of the secure zone? As for my flight from Barcelona to CDG, why do arriving passengers have to go through customs/immigration??? So much for the EU being one big community! I was able to drive from Spain to France with no controls whatsoever, but do the same journey by air and they put you through controls for some reason??...Does anyone know why they do this? And of course, it appears any connection (atleast at Terminal 2F) requires you going through security once again…. Arriving planes dump you off on the floor below the departures floor requiring you to clear security to get onto the departures floor… weird.
Are there any other airports in Europe that are friendlier to connecting passengers?... ie. don’t push you out of secure zone for every arrival and don’t force you through customs/immigration when arriving from another EU airport?
Wouldn’t be such a big issue if each of the customs/immigration and security lines at CDG weren’t horribly long and slow.
Thanks.