Of the top ten worst airports in Europe, London’s Heathrow came in as the utmost worst. Second place? Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport.

This comes as little surprise to anyone who has used this airport in any capacity. I chuckle when my compatriots think that CDG, being in Paris, will be just as efficient and speedy as your average American airport. Not exactly the case. My advice to anyone arriving to CDG: if you have a connection, you must give yourself over one hour. The one hour rule just doesn’t cut it at CDG. Usually you arrive but sit on the tarmack for a while waiting for a fleet of buses to bring you to the actual airport. The buses arrive, they take about 15 minutes to fill up. Another 15 minutes (last time it took one hour for my flight) to get to the terminal. Then baggage claim, etc. etc. etc.
If you are flying out of CDG going overseas, be sure to give yourself 3 hours. Yes, 3 hours. It’s long, but so are the lines. Lines for check-in, lines for security, it’s all long.

Here’s a quote from today’s New York Times article about the worst airports in the world:

As for de Gaulle, one fellow traveler called it “like being in an Escher print.” The terminals look identical and are widely spread out. The signs are poor. If you ask an airport employee where your gate is, you often get bad advice.

Security lines for check-in, especially for transfers to flights leaving the European Union, are endless, inefficient and poorly organized, so forget about making tight international connections. Airlines like Air France and Lufthansa still sell flights as if post-9/11 security measures never happened. They will allow travel agents to book transfers in Paris and Frankfurt with less than an hour between flights (never enough time!).

“If you don’t know the airport, it’s really hard to find things,” said Nada Kranjc of Ptuj, Slovenia. “And no one is very pleasant.” Yes. The worst thing is that when you have missed your plane or can’t figure out which line leads to your connecting flight, you’re often at the mercy of indifferent, aloof Parisian airline or airport employees.