Strasbourg to CDG in morning for same day flight back to US? Or is this too risky?

...if it'd be better to return to Paris the night before...

If I were in your position, I'd spend the night before in Paris. While what you are thinking of doing might work if all goes well, remember Murphy's Law.

Why not give the time of your air departure? It's also relevant whether you have an Economy or Business Class ticket.

Here's one data point for you: In the opposite direction, we arrived at CDG from New Jersey in plenty of time for our discount, advance-purchase TGV train to Strasbourg. But we were stopped just before entering the stairs to our platform. An abandoned/forgotten suitcase had just been discovered on our platform. Everyone had to move back 200 feet, and we waited while (?) the sniffing dogs or the x-ray truck was summoned, and the suitcase eventually removed or destroyed (?) We thought we were going to miss our train, but they opened the platform about 10 minutes before the scheduled departure. So we were okay.

Now, you can suppose that we wouldn't have had to pay for a new ticket if we'd missed the train through no fault of our own. But we would have been much later to Strasbourg. And we might not have had a seat, or a luggage rack space.

My rule is to always be in the town of a high stakes departure the night before the flight. If the flight is before noon I'd come late the night before and stay at a hotel AT the airport. If an afternoon flight, I'd stay in Paris and take a cab in the morning. In our decades of travel we have had many weird things happen including a Thalys from Amsterdam that killed someone outside Rotterdam resulting in the 3.5 hour train trip taking 8.5 hours. Many people missed flights. We have had pile ups on the high way that delayed us hours; we once were on a tram in Amsterdam on our way to the train station that broke down and we had to run with luggage about a km to make the train (I always add a lot of cushion in planning to my husband's annoyance, but it pays off in situations like this). Stuff happens and missing a high stakes flight is costly.

Thank you TC - I am leaning this way too….just figured maybe it’d be best to take the worry out of our flight day.

Tim, we haven’t yet booked flights because we are trying to figure out the end of the itinerary, but it looks like we have 2 options if we choose to leave from Strasbourg to CDG (flight at 12:25pm and flight at 2:10pm). If we leave from Paris, we have 4 options, 2 being early in the morning that wouldn’t be possible from Strasbourg due to the earliest trains getting in too late. Thank you for sharing your experience with the abandoned suitcase! This is the kind of stress I’m not sure we need the morning of our flights…heavily leaning towards Paris the night before for easier time getting to CDG.

Thank you janettravels44 - I think this is sage advice!! I think this is what we will end up doing (going to Paris the night before). It at least eliminates some variables that could ruin our chances of making our flight on time!

My first time in France, December, 2019, I was completely ignorant regarding the frequency of labor strikes in France, so I never checked. This was a big one, and included most means of mass transit, and had been posted 4-6 weeks in advance. I never knew to check, and yes, the strike started the day we were to take the train to Germany.
It seems like labor strikes are more frequent now, and includes other countries, the U.K., Italy, and Germany coming to mind.
So, I would not recommend getting to the airport on your day of flying. You need some flexibility in the event of disruptions to your planned train service.
Good luck , and have a wonderful trip!

I always remember standing in line for the Eurostar during some type of "dispute" related to Brexit watching a woman in the 8 am train line sobbing hysterically and begging for help! At this point it's 10... the 7 AM train hasn't managed to clear all it's passengers and leave. They were saying 4 hour delays minimum. She had an afternoon flight for her and her family out of LHR back to the US..and she was probably going to miss it. Now I was doing the same thing, going back to London for a flight but I had over 24 hours. (I have no idea what happened. When they told me "you will stand in this line for at least 4 hours before you even begin the immigration/security process I bailed... I had already researched other options and I went over and bought a ticket Paris to Brussels and Brussels to London)

The problem with French fast trains is they make you lose all sense of how far apart places really are.

If for some reason there is a problem with your train that morning, you are some 300 miles from Paris, and you won't have the five hours it would take you to drive to CDG, much less the additional time you would need to research a rental car, pick it up, and return it.

You simply can not cover the ground in a vehicle in anywhere near the same time a TGV train can. So there is no plan B that will work to get you to the airport in time if there is a train problem - strike, mechanical, weather, rotten luck missing the departure by 5 minutes.

I would be in Paris the night before my flight out.

(I will note, in response to Pat's experience, that in fact the fall/winter 2019 transport strikes were the worst we have had for years and we haven't yet had anything like them since. Not to say there haven't been strikes since then, because there have been, but we have not had anything with the sheer length in time and breadth of impact. In that sense, labor strikes are not getting more frequent in France -- and yes, by law, they are announced in advance. There have always been strikes in France, and there will always be strikes in France. The minimum service rules mean they are announced in advance. But none of that matters if it's your planned travel day that gets affected, and you are on a tight schedule !)

Kim, thanks, I never realized how far the distance is. Thanks for explaining the issues so clearly.

And I'm glad you haven't experienced strikes as severe as in 2019. We were in Strasbourg, and our wine tour driver figured out our solution. We didn't realize how close to Kehl, Germany, we were. In a worst case scenario, we could walk the 3 miles across the border to the German train station. But our wine tour driver suggested a cab, because taxis were private, he said, and not honoring the strike. So I worried all night the taxi wouldn't show up. I was so grateful when we stepped off the elevator and the taxi driver was there, early and waiting for us, and did not charge excessive rates. And once in the little Kehl train station (heading to Stuttgart), we were interviewed by the local radio station, regarding our difficulties with the strike. Some have a story I have retold dozens of times!