We traveled home from Paris yesterday, a direct flight from CDG to ORD, and it was trouble free. Here's my report:
We were staying in a hotel in the 6th Arrondissement. For our trip home, we'd booked Air France's daily non-stop from Paris to Chicago. It was scheduled to leave at 1:35 p.m. Based on advice that it would take 45 minutes to get to the airport by cab, and we should arrive at least 3 hours before flight time, we conservatively scheduled our cab pick up for 9:15. This would give us 3.5 hours at the airport.
There was no traffic for the cab to deal with on a Sunday morning. By 9:40, we'd reached the airport. Our cab driver had a five minute wait in line to drop us off at our terminal, 2E. The check in desks and kiosks were just inside the door, about a one minute walk away. Many kiosks were available. We checked in and printed our boarding passes and luggage tags with no wait whatsoever. We then walked a couple minutes to the baggage drop off area. Even though we were traveling with carry-on sized bags, we wanted to get them checked so we could walk around in the airport without them, and not have to hoist them into the overhead bins, which were expected to be crowded for our full flight (per information on the screen of the check-in kiosk).
There was a line of only about 5 people ahead of us at the bag drop off area. Each of the stations was unmanned. It was self-service, using a hand-held scanner on our boarding pass and luggage tag, then placing the bag on the conveyor belt to be weighed, and waiting for the screen to verify that the bag didn't exceed the maximum weight.
We walked a minute or so to the passport control line. This is where we've had an hour-long wait in line on past trips. Not this time. It was a very small line that moved continuously. We got through this area in just 4 minutes.
We then walked a minute and boarded a tram to take us to the gates. Ours was in the "M" area. When the tram stopped, we had a short walk to security. It involved going up one level on an escalator. The line for security wasn't too bad. Getting through security took 14 minutes. Our longest line of the day.
Then we were ready to fly. We had to go up one more level via escalator and we were in the area with shops, and a couple places to buy food, near the M gates. It was 11:05 a.m., less than two hours after leaving our hotel and 2.5 hours until our flight departure.
We moved from the common area to our gate at 12:30, the time that was scheduled for boarding to begin. Oddly, they didn't announce boarding groups for this flight. It was one big line. People had lined up early and we were at the end. When boarding began, the line moved forward with no apparent effort to first board families with children, people needing extra help, or first class passengers. Maybe I missed these announcements when we were still in the common area, and those people were already all at the front of the line, but it looked like one general boarding line. There was plenty of space in the overhead bin for my backpack even though I was one of the last to board.
The flight left one minute late and arrived at O'Hare one minute early. The line at ORD's passport control looked pretty long but agents were helping with crowd control (directing people to the lines) and we got through that area in under 10 minutes, without having Global Entry status. When we were at the desk, the agent verified our identities, asked no questions, then handed us a customs card and told us to turn it in as the last step, saying we wouldn't have to write on it. We then moved to the luggage carrousels. My husband's bag was already on the belt, mine arrived about 20 minutes later. We got in the exit line, which had about 10 people ahead of us. Turned in our customs cards, and exited.
Super simple travel day!