Flying to Rome via Paris next year: How long a transit at CDG

It’s not “customs”
It is Immigration or passport control and you have to do that when you enter Schengen
So you will do it at CDG not Rome

We have only transited thru CDG going opposite direction Nice-CDG-IAD. And the airlines Air France was actually very good in making sure we moved quickly thru security to next terminal etc
IIRC we didn’t have a lot of time either

If you’re booked through on one ticket, the airline would then send you on their next available flight if you missed the connection. This happened to me once and I was on a flight 2 hours later. If you do spend time in Paris, you’ll have to purchase ticket to Paris and a separate flight from Paris to Rome which might be substantially more expensive.

Just for your information, it’s not customs you go through, it’s immigration. The Schengen regulations are very strict, and the agents carefully scrutinize passports and may ask questions of travelers. That’s why it can take a long time. If entering from a non-Schengen country, like the U.S., you must go through the process at the first arrival airport, even if you are only in transit.
Allowing just an hour is cutting it close. The last time we we did it, we had to run through part of that airport. There are two points of good news. One is that if the airline sells you a ticket like that and you miss your connection, they have to get you on the next available flight. Lots of flights from CDG to FCO. The second is that if you have checked baggage, I’m pretty sure they will make strenuous efforts to get you on the flight, too.

Yes - you would go through Immigration in Paris (not customs) just like you did in Amsterdam. In both cases, as others have mentioned, it’s because that city/airport is your first stop in the Schengen Zone. You will always have this if you have another Schengen stop before your actual destination.

My guess is the Amsterdam Schiphol is actually easier to do this in than
CDG. If you want to imagine that !!

I think it is fair to say that one hour is exceptionally optimistic. Putting aside the Schengen issues, we have no clue about what delays will exist next year because of COVID.

I hate running through airports, and even with a guaranteed seat on a later flight, I find such inconveniences foreseeable and therefore avoidable. Get a longer time between flights, do the immigration/COVID thing without worrying, have a coffee and make a leisurely correspondence between flights.

We ended up flying through CDG to Milan last August after our flight to JKF was delayed enough to miss our flight.

I timed it. It took us 2 hours from time we deplaned until we were at the gate for our flight. We had to go through two checkpoints with lines. We had 2.5 hours so we were fine.

I agree with Kim, and sure, it's my "hometown" airport so I'm a little biased... but I find AMS far easier to connect through, rather than CDG. When living in Vienna and Copenhagen, we often had to connect through either CDG or AMS. We eventually gravitated to only AMS connections.

Alas, now we arrive and depart, rather than connect at AMS, but it will still be my first choice for friends, family, and clients - especially given the eGate, automatic self-service passport checkpoints: https://youtu.be/sokgy53Bj5M and the ability to interact with an AMS security official to skip the line if you have a tight connection.

If you want to add several days in Paris to your trip, there are plenty of reasons to do that, but it will certainly cost you in airfare. I agree with others that 60-90 minutes to change at CDG is cutting it too close. Can you book flights with a longer connection time (like 3 hours?) without having to spend much more? That would seem like the best solution.

You'll clear customs, which has to do with the things you bring with you, after landing in Rome and retrieving any checked baggage. As others have pointed out, the border-crossing process at CDG (as at AMS on your earlier trip) is for the Schengen area of Europe, which includes France, Netherlands, and Italy. The good news is that you won't have any immigration process when you land in Rome.

Thanks everyone for the great replies.

I actually rechecked Kayak and there appear to be flights with longer layovers, in other cities besides Paris.

My question is the following: if one does book an international flight with a layover on the same airline, will they guarantee a flight on the next available one, if one misses the connection?

I see a flight Seattle - FCO Rome on United with two hour layovers (Newark, Toronto on the way back). That seems to be the only same airline flight Seattle to Rome.

The reason I ask is because of an experience I had several years flying Seattle - Athens where I missed the connection in Munich and was basically on my own to get another flight from Munich - Athens (paid for or included within the ticket I had already bought). It was a terrible hassle getting a new ticket (not easy to even find the ticket counter of Aegean Airlines, the second carrier). It looked like I might have to wait for a midnight flight that same day (13 hours away), and I was told first that I would have to move own luggage to the ticket counter of Aegean and then later told it had been lost and/or was on the original scheduled connecting flight!

The second carrier is apparently not responsible for a missed connection...I learned this the hard way, and I think it's a general rule in the industry (?).

Have you checked Delta or American?

Have you been buying your tickets through kayak ( or similar) or from the airline? Your account of being left to your own devices to solve a missed connection en-route to Greece, does not sound like had booked a ticket direct from the airline for the entire journey.

My question is the following: if one does book an international flight
with a layover on the same airline, will they guarantee a flight on
the next available one, if one misses the connection?

If you have bought is as one ticket, yes. And it doesn't have to be the same airline, it can be a couple of airlines code sharing. But some "booking sites" will not sell you one ticket, but a bunch of separate single tickets so that if one flight is late, you are on your own.

I see a flight Seattle - FCO Rome on United with two hour layovers
(Newark, Toronto on the way back). That seems to be the only same
airline flight Seattle to Rome.

You might want to check again, Lufthansa via Frankfurt or Icelandair via Reykjavík are two one stop option with a single airline.

The reason I ask is because of an experience I had several years
flying Seattle - Athens where I missed the connection in Munich and
was basically on my own to get another flight from Munich - Athens
(paid for or included within the ticket I had already bought). It was
a terrible hassle getting a new ticket (not easy to even find the
ticket counter of Aegean Airlines, the second carrier).

Did you buy the ticket direct from the airline or via some kind of booking site? If it was the latter, you might in reality have had two separate tickets.

The vast majority of travelers answering questions here will tell you to buy your ticket directly from the airline. Let the airline create the itinerary using its own and partner airlines planes. They will be responsible for getting you to your destination. You will not need to check in your luggage more than once. If you miss a plane, the airline will have a record of your previous plane being late and find you a new seat.

When you book with a website, for example called Invisible Service, they may put independent flights on one itinerary. If you have a problem, the airline will tell you to contact the Invisible website. You were lucky the airline offered you a seat 13 hours later. It could have told you to contact Invisible. Or it could have marked you as a no-show. So always buy your ticket from the airline directly.

The Seattle to Athens trip via Munich (on a Lufthansa subsidiary and then Aegean) was booked on an engine like Kayak or Priceline.

I normally fly on Delta to Europe (Paris), so this situation doesn't normally come up, though I haven't ever missed a connection in Europe (come close, though). The Athens trip was a really wake-up call (nightmare come true: the restroom holding tank hadn't been emptied before flight, so the plane had to stop in Dublin...that was just the beginning).

Maybe all bets are now off, now that Covid-19 is rearing its ugly head, once again.