Customs at CDG

You'll go through passport control at both the terminal of your CDG arrival and departure. Customs is nothing but a walk through upon your CDG arrival.

You will have to change terminals as well. Swiss uses Terminal 1 and American uses Terminal 2A. There is a shuttle train, CDGval, to accomplish this. I hope you have a lot of time for this transfer.

We have 2.5 hours between flights. We're flying business class and will only have carry on bags.

Good luck. You will need it, especially if you are not able to check into your American Airlines flight before you get to CDG.

See also http://easycdg.com/passenger-information/connecting-flight-connections-paris-cdg-airport/where-to-go/.

I was looking at the Swissair site and what I could find was that flights from Kenya ( NBO, presumably?) were not direct to CDG. It looked like most went via ZUR.

Did I miss something? Having a 2.5 hr connection at CDG after taking two flights earlier in the day does not produce a warm n fuzzy feeling. I hope you have a direct flight from Kenya to CDG to maximize your chance of success. Please pass the Tums.

The link in the post from Laura is a very useful one. From the description and the airlines used, I am not sure if this is a booked through ticket and as it says at the site, the information about timing applies if you have booked a through ticket. If you have, you have tons of time. If you have not, you might not be able to get through the abbreviated process that will get you to Terminal 2A in about 40 minutes. What is your plan if your flight into CDG is late? Four of my last six flights to Paris have arrived over an hour late. By the way, are you arriving from Zurich or directly from Nairobi? If from Zurich, you will do passport control Zurich Airport which could be helpful because when you land at CDG, you will walk out into Terminal 1 and from there can catch CDGVal to Terminal 2. You will go through customs when you arrive at DFW.