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Tuesday 25 August 2009

It's official, Paris Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport is the world's worst

To anyone who regularly (or even infrequently) has the displeasure of passing through Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, France's major airport, the findings by the independent Canadian-based website sleepingairports.net that it ranks as the worst in the world will come as no surprise.

Back in April this year even this mild-mannered Brit was forced to bash away at the keyboard to share with others some of the horrors offered up by what has to be the biggest mess and work in progress, Terminal E (read more about that here).




But according to the website the problems experienced by passengers at CDG aren't just limited to one terminal.

The site asked its readers to rate airports on what it calls the "four Cs"; comfort, conveniences, cleanliness and customer service. And Roissy failed to deliver the goods on all counts.

All right so it might not be the most scientific poll ever taken, but the results, albeit only for the first six months of this year, and the comments, aren't far off the mark, as anyone regularly faced with the prospect of passing through CDG will know.

Filthy, noisy, unwelcoming and full of outright rude and unhelpful staff were just some of the comments made as Roissy beat out Moscow's Sheremetyevo, New York's JFK, Las Angeles' LAX and Delhi airport in India for the least coveted title of the world's worst.

The findings haven't gone unnoticed here in France, although the perhaps Aéroports de Paris (ADP), the authority that owns and manages both Roissy-CDG and the capital's other major airport, Orly, might wish that they had.

But at least they had one defender (of sorts) in the form of Jacques Attali who, among many other hats he has worn, was an advisor to the former French president, François Mitterrand.

Even he had some difficulty though in downplaying the arguments and comments of what is after all an independent website and whose contributors hadn't exactly been coerced into making their remarks.

He argues that although the reputation is without doubt unjust as there are plenty of ADP staff at both Roissy and Orly who "do their best to welcome, help and make the experience of passing through the airport a pleasurable one" there is also some substance to the findings.

He imagines arriving in France for the first time and seeing rather "hideous and vague signs, reminiscent of East Berlin".

"No human being there with whom to interact and no welcome," he writes.

"And it's worse for those arriving early in the morning when there are in general just a couple of police at passport control doing their best to deal with thousands of passengers arriving from North America and Asia."

Ah yes, Monsieur Attali, ADP and sleepingairports.net, there's many a horror tale this (and I'm sure other) user(s) of Roissy-CDG could tell.

Perhaps some will comment here and recount their stories or even (now this really would be a surprise) others will come to the airport's defence.




One thing's for sure, Roissy-CDG is a far, far cry from Singapore's Changi airport, which has consistently received rave reviews, regularly rates as the world's best, and charmed this traveller when he passed through for the first time earlier this year.

A holiday in its own right.

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