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Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and Disabled people

Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and Disabled people

 

You use a wheelchair? Your health requires special services at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport?

 

To help you with the best preparations for your journey, here is some essential information.

 

Paris Charles de Gaulle airport provides assistance for disabled and reduced mobility passengers from the time of their arrival and throughout their stay in the terminal.
Notify your assistance requirements at least 48h before departure
To ensure the best service quality and cut your wait to a minimum, you must notify your requirements to the airline or your travel agent from the time of booking and at least 48h before your flight.
Remember to ask for your doctor's opinion
If you have recently been ill, had an operation, or your condition is changing; you might need medical approval to travel. Consult your doctor.
Notify Paris Charles de Gaulle airport as soon as you reach the airport
Whether you travel by car, by taxi or by public transport, once you reach the airport there are customer assistance terminals allowing you to notify us of your arrival. You may also go to the reception areas or check-in counters of your airline in the terminals to obtain our assistance. Once notified, our reception and accompanying service will come and collect you from where you placed the call.
 Find more information on this page "Reception at the airport"

 

 

If you are traveling with Air France, contact SAPHIR (Information and Reservation Assistance Service for the Disabled):
This service is open:
- 9 am to 7 pm Monday to Friday
- 9 am to 6 pm Saturday
Tel : 0 820 01 24 24 (0,12 € per minute)
Fax : 01 49 69 54 16
Seek a medical opinion
Your condition changes?
You were recently treated for illness or had an operation? You may need medical clearance before traveling. To perform the formalities needed so that your airline can carry you, ask your physician.

 

If you are traveling with Air France, contact the Air France Medical Department:
Aérogare des Invalides/Paris Invalides Air Terminal
2, rue Robert Esnault Pelterie
75007 Paris
This service is open:
- 9 am to 6 pm Monday to Friday
- 9 am to 5 pm Saturday
Tel : 01 43 17 22 00 - Fax : 01 43 17 22 01
Allow time for connections
To make sure you will not miss your connecting flight:
- Draw the attention of your airline or travel agent to connection times (formalities + travel time),

 

Ask for help from the airport's ground assistance service
- Distances are sometimes long, from 80 to 500 meters,
- Your route may be complicated:
- changes in floor levels,
- moving walkways,
- airside shuttles.

 

 

Before leaving the plane
- Tell the flight attendant that you have a connecting flight to catch.
- On leaving the plane, assistance staff will:
- be on hand to meet you,

 

 

 

 

 

Your comments : Disabled people

Mobile Assistance
- BMH
(4 Jun 2016 - 09:45)
Upon arriving in the mobility assistance drop off point this is what happened. NOTHING. There were chairs to sit and wait. We waited 25 minutes. There was no information given as to when our assistance would arrive. There was no phone to call for this service. Three wheelchairs with pushers arrived but not for us so they left without assisting us. Finally 1 wheelchair arrives for me but not for husband. Because we were delayed on connecting flight we were running out of time to board. So I walked the best I could and let my husband go by wheelchair. I passed a lot of wheelchairs being pushed with no one in them and of course they were not available. I made reservations and re-confirmed them before leaving. Verified at Budapest airport that we would have wheelchairs. Had it on boarding pass but we only got half of what we needed. CDG talks big about the great service but it is lacking.
lack of disabled customer care on transfers
- Klaus Kopp
(5 Oct 2015 - 18:00)
I found total lack of English communication shameful; furthermore - apart from the last assisting gentrleman Rene - the other assistance was not really assisting in the true sense of the word.
Airport staff as a whole should learn some common manners and not pull and shove disabled people around without being willing and or able to communicate in the langugge required. Just because I had more than one disability, namely being blind and having reduced mobility, does not give anyone the right to treat me like a sack of potatoes.
Staff should have proper disability training and work attitude testing. Charles de Gaulle have a lot of improvements to make to deserve the title wheelchair assistance providers.
wheelchair assidisability awareness is very poor!
- Klaus Kopp
(5 Oct 2015 - 18:00)
Disability awareness and needs of different disabilities is really non-existent.
Disabled people don't only need wheelchairs for their mobility problems, they may additionally have sight and hearing problems, etc.
I object to being treated like a lump of meant without courtesy and without proper communication by assisting people. There was only one notable exception - see my full report.
I have notified the English disabled foundation about this and will also notify the European disability regulator. CDG certainly does not need to boast aboutt an 'excellent service'.
I have never been treated as roughly - pushed, pulled and shoved about like a lump of meat also by your security personnel. Shame on them all.
All your staff need training in manners and handling people training as well as sufficient communication skills to let people know what they have to do.
The total unwillingness by all of your so called assistance staff - big exception was Rene (fantastic manners and skills) - all the rest are probably underpaid and people who never have received a minute's training for that responsible job.
High time you train them properly and pay them properly too.

Klaus Kopp MA
Terrible
- limping
(11 Mar 2014 - 08:45)
Twice now I'v had issues with Charles de Gaulle handicap assistance. The first time, my aged mother missed her flight because the wheelchair we had ordered in advance didn't come by at all. The second time we had a 2-hour wait -- my husband had belatedly hurt his foot and couldn't walk. As one poster mentioned above, the Air France ground crew was extremely helpful in trying to assist us, but the people in charge of wheelchairs first insisted that someone had come by and hadn't found us -- a complete lie as we were there all the time, alone! -- and then kept saying "in 2 minutes, in 5 minutes...". It took 2 hours. My husband works in the airport so heads are gonna roll...
Client service for people with disability
- jeanne Collins
(7 May 2013 - 09:00)
This past weekend, my husband and I were in transit at CDG, and had made a request for wheelchair assistance within the airport. I'm happy to say we were extremely pleased with the service we received. The assistants were at the exit of the plane, with a wheelchair, and with a combination of good will, my French and our assistant, Miloud Stele, we were able to easily communicate our needs and his ways to assist us. We were moved efficiently and safely thru the airport and transported to the lobby of our airport hotel. We were very happy when M. stele offered to arrange for our pickup at the hotel for transport to the airport the next morning. Five stars for the service!
Disability Travel arrangements - 16th February
- Christine Lester
(18 Feb 2013 - 08:45)
I booked special assistance for arrival at CDG from Naples transferring from terminal F to Terminal E2 for onward destination Birmingham (UK). I travel all over European cities for European Commission business, and must say I found CDG most inflexible. We asked if we could either purchase something to eat on the way to our Gate (K53) and were told that if we wanted to stop a few metres from the gate, the wheelchair would be removed and I would have to walk the remainder of the way to the gate !! We had to agree to be left at the Gate and my husband had to walk back to collect something to eat, the wheelchair was then brought back to K53 3 hours later. So I would have had nothing to eat nor access to toilet facilities for nearly 4 hours. Other airports are far more accommodating and this is not the first time I have had problems at CDG. I am, of course, aware of EC Laws
Three hour wait for wheelchair at Charles de Gaule
- H. R. Smith
(21 Oct 2012 - 10:00)
I am 83 and have reduced mobility. Last Sunday morning I and three other elderly passengers requiring wheelchairs were forced to wait for over three hours in the arrival hall where we could not even obtain a glass of water or use the toilets as they were too far away to walk to. Some computer glitch had deleted our names from some list. I was told the service centre is some distance from the arrival terminal so perhaps there was an excuse for lack of immediate service, but not for three hours delay. They could have brought the wheelchairs from a neighbouring country in less time.

The Air France ground staff at the desk were very cooperative and concerned but their frequent phone calls to airport service produced no results. Every half hour or so we were told the wheelchairs would be there in 20 or 30 minutes but none arrived. I and the other passengers all missed our connecting flight and had to take a flight some hours later. This change of flight was presumably the cause of my luggage not arriving until the next day.

We had arrived in Paris at 08:10 and at 11:10 we were still in the arrivals hall. As the time for the later rescheduled flight drew near the Air France ground staff were discussing amongst themselves the possibility of using using their own cars to take us somehow to the other terminal.

Finally, wheelchair service did show up to take us to the departure terminal. The man pushing the chair told me that the terminal he was taking me to to catch the Malaga flight was not regularly in his area of service. That is no excuse for leaving us in the arrivals hall for more than three boring uncomfortable hours and causing us to miss our connection.
This is worse than bad service, it is disgusting, chaotic.
Wheel chair assistance
- Mr E L Strauss
(19 Apr 2012 - 08:15)
Avoid this Airport at all costs !!! Wheelchair assistance I had requested days in advance, did not turn up. My wife had to assist me to our connecting flight , on her own. I am a disabled man, my wife is a pensioner...no explanation given , and a very long distance to struggle with or miss your flight. AS a result I had a cardiac event aboard our flight and nearly died. On the return flight the assistant tried to transfer me on onre of those narro chairs used aboard , it didnt work..I had to struggle up the ramp , and nearly fell off this ridiculous little chair , untill she finally realised that she would have to get a proper chair. this demonstrates the level of incompetence at this massive airport.....stay a way if you are disabled or not!!!