How to change airlines in Paris?

Let's assume you are flying easyJet from Charles de Gaulle where your Delta flight arrives (easyJet also flies from Orly which would make life more complicated.) easyJet does not connect with any other flights, including its own. From the Delta flight, you will have to go through Immigration security to enter France, collect your checked bag (follow the signs, and crowds) and go through Customs, which is almost always a matter of simply walking through a green door. Then you move to easyJet's departure area to check in. Be sure to read the easyJet website carefully. Its restrictions on checked, and particularly cabin, luggage are stricter than Delta's, and they are enforced. You can check in on-line well in advance, and buy the appropriate luggage allowance; doing it at the gate is much more expensive.
CdG airport is famously complex, but the wesite offers some aid and comfort. http://www.aeroportsdeparis.fr/en/homepage It includes advice and maps for moving between the terminals and also a section for connections. Most of all, stay calm; thousands of people navigate CdG successfully every day.

And I sincerely hope that you've not booked an EasyJet flight out of CDG on the same day you arrive from the USA via Delta Airlines. If your Delta flight is late (which is a very real possibility) you miss your EasyJet flight because you won't have time to go through immigration/passport control, collect your bags, AND go back to checkin for EasyJet. What happens if your bag is misplaced on your Delta flight and you have to stand in line to file a missing bag claim...

There are just so many reasons to NOT book a separate flight on the same day as your arrival flight. I hope everything goes smoothly for you.

A vey helpful website is easycdg.com. Will help allay your fears.

You don't have a connection. You have two separate flights so all the rules of getting the Easyjet are the same as if you just arrived from a hotel in Paris. On arrival on Delta you go through all the normal immigration formalities which can take from 15 minutes to an hour and a half (an hour is a good estimate), get your bags which may or may not appear quickly, go through customs which just involves walking out a door and now you are in the terminal outside security and need to find your correct terminal and check in, check bags and go through security. The process would be slightly different if it were a connection.

Be mentally prepared to buy new tickets on Easyjet if you didn't allow enough time to do all this. I would want at least 5 hours between flights since you are supposed to be at CDG 3 hours before a flight and it often takes that long. Let's hope the incoming plane is not seriously late as well which happens.

Make very sure you conform to the baggage rules for Easyjet; they are fairly generous but strictly enforced and any overage is very expensive. If you bought a checked bag, make sure your bag doesn't exceed 20 kg and the last time I flew with them, they allowed only one carry on (not a bag and a personal item) so I had to make sure my purse was in my one carry on. Their carry on size is also very small compared to typical US allowances so even a 22 inch US carry on bag will not be allowed. If you haven't already bought room for your checked bag do so before travel as it is really expensive to do it at the airport and REALLY expensive to have to do it at the gate.

If transferring between terminals, take the free shuttle which runs underground. There can still be a lot of walking in terminal 2. Your transfer between airlines will be easier and faster if you don't check luggage! Getting checked luggage after a flight can take 30 minutes or more. I waited an hour at CDG once. I guess the workers were on their lunch break. There are good signs in the airport. "Sortie" means EXIT.

Here are the directions from easycdg:

Terminal 2E to Terminal 2A/C/D

Journey time 40 min (2A-2C) ; 45 min (2D)
– Follow the signs ″Flight Connections″ then indications for terminal 2A, 2C or 2D.
– Go through Security check.
– Take the inter-terminal shuttle bus ″Blue Route″ towards terminal 2A-2C (same stop) or terminal 2D.
– Proceed to your boarding gate (via Passport control if you are transferring to a Schengen flight at terminal 2D).

I hope you have left 6 hours for this operation, especially if you check a bag. These directions are for people not claiming bags, though.

I agree with the caution about non-linked connecting flights..i.e single tickets. But if you're going to do it, make sure you build in extra time to connect. It's not my first choice to have separate tickets for my routing, but sometimes it's unavoidable. I'm doing it myself in January through Frankfurt. I've given myself 5 hours and 10 minutes. And I think it's easier at Frankfurt than at CDG.

Also - I don't check a bag so I'm not waiting around for luggage at all.

Can you build yourself a long layover like that?

I am simply reiterating that's it not wise to underestimate the time it will take you to claim your checked bag at CDG. We also waited at least an hour for ours. Never again.

Celeste is right; we too have waited an hour and then our name was on a list of names read out saying our bag had not been loaded on the plane and therefore would be arriving on a later flight. Before exiting through customs, I insisted we do one last walk around the carrousel and there were our bags finally. I shudder to think what would have happened if we had listened to the word that our bags hadn't made the flight and had not checked.

But Easyjet carry on requirements are so strict that it is pretty difficult to do a very long trip with those requirements (and I have done 3 mos on a 22 inch carry on bag) The carry on bags that fit on Easyjet would be impossible for me -- to get all my clothes, prescription drugs, electronics, camera gear etc in one tiny bag -- not happening. One option would be to carry on for the US flight with a 20 kg bag and the usual carry on computer bag or whatever and then check the bag for the onward Easyjet flight. I would not attempt any of this without 5 hours given the stuff that can happen including seriously late incoming plane.

Thanks to all for your responses. It appears that we have made a rookie mistake by only allowing 2 1/2 hours between the arrival of our Delta flight (8:30 a.m.) and the departure of Easy Jet (11:00 a.m.) . Live and learn. :(
Yes, we will have checked baggage. Will need to re-book and look at other options. Suggestions anyone?

Well I was going to tell you to look at the later EasyJet flight I was seeing for each day but I notice now that they move down to one flight per day between CDG and Krakow at the beginning of July and the flight is about 10:30ish some days and later on others. Are you traveling in July or August?

That's the only nonstop I see from CDG to Krakow. Assuming your Delta flights are booked and set the simplest thing you can do to help yourself is to NOT check those bags on Delta. Delta's carryon allowance is quite generous...22x14x9 and not more than 45 linear inches total. Plus you can have an additional small item like a purse. If you pack carefully, you can easily pack for 3 or 4 weeks in that suitcase.

Easy Jet lets you have ONE item, but it's plenty large - 22x17.8x9.8. And you can upgrade your seats to EasyJet Plus or Extra Legroom seats and then you can bring your smaller second item as well.

So primary suggestion - carry on your stuff.

Secondary suggestion is harder. There's flights all day long to Warsaw, but that's a 4 hour train ride away from Krakow.

Suggestions:

1) See what Delta will charge you to change your ticket to fly all the way to Krakow. This way, you are all on one ticket, and it is a true connection. You get both boarding passes when you check in for your first flight; your luggage is checked through all the way to Prague (you don't see or handle it in Paris at all); and if your incoming flight into Paris is delayed, it's the airline's responsibility to put you on the next available flight at no extra charge. The comfort and simplicity this gives makes it worth extra money; but just how much extra it's going to cost you can only know by asking (possibly much more than you want to spend).

2) Book a second flight from Paris CDG to Krakow, on any carrier, many hours later than your scheduled arrival. I once did this going from Philadelphia to Rome, then on a separate ticket from Rome to Palermo. One Rome to Palermo flight was 3 hours after my arrival, and one was 10 hours after arrival. I knew I'd use one ticket and throw away the other, and simply considered the two tickets together as the cost of the flight. In my case, I made the 3 hour connection with time to spare, but of course, I could just as easily have missed it.

To find flights from CDG to Krakow, use Skyscanner: https://www.skyscanner.com/.

Be SURE you don't book a flight from the other Paris airports of Orly (ORY) or Beauvais (BVA).

For your future bookings: what matters when taking multiple flights isn't the airlines, it's the tickets. If you're all on one ticket, even with different airlines, all the things I outlined in my first paragraph apply (luggage checked through, checked in for all flights at once, and protection if you miss the connection because of an issue with the arriving flight being late). If you're on separate tickets, even with the same airline, all the problems everyone else outlined apply (must check in separately for each flight, must reclaim luggage and recheck it, and no protection if you miss the flight - for any reason).

I was cross-posting with Valerie. Since it seems you can't get a later flight to Krakow, if you're not able to change your ticket to go to Krakow, you can use her idea of buying a later flight to Warsaw. The good news is that trains from Krakow to Warsaw now take only 2.5 hours; of course, you have to get from the airport to the station.