I'm starting to research flights to Paris for next year and planned to use United miles only. However, I'm not seeing any options for miles only direct flights - only with connections. I know there are direct flights - and everything I read on line tells me there should be direct options with miles only. But I'm not seeing any, not matter which dates I use.

Am I doing something wrong? Or is this not an option? Anyone been down this road lately?

Nope. No direct flights (cash or points) as Jimmy mentioned. We booked the Air France flight thru Delta because I'm sure I can eventually accumulate more miles on Delta than I will on Air France.

Oh wow - I was doing my research via Claude, who was adamant in mulriple responses that United flew direct from IAH to CDG. I should have just looked the old fashioned way... Freaking AI...

So maybe Air France is the way to go. I believe AMEX and Chase Sapphire transfers 1:1? At least, according to CLaude....

BSD said:

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Nope. No direct flights (cash or points) as Jimmy mentioned. We booked the Air France flight thru Delta because I'm sure I can eventually accumulate more miles on Delta than I will on Air France.

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We did the same last year...booked through Delta. As the other posters said, there is no nonstop to CDG on United. You can't pick your seat when you book with Delta. Once you have a confirmation number, you have to go to the AirFrance site and enter your booking info to pick a seat (and pay a fee).

There are some things to know about Air France. I had trouble getting an online boarding pass and was forced to go to the counter, where they proceeded to weigh my carry on and forced me to check it because of weight.

At CDG, all bags are weighed before passing through security, and again, they will force you to check if overweight.

I think the limit is about 12 kg.

I don't ever check bags, so this was really annoying to me. But other than that, the AirFrance product (we flew economy, but did book exit row seats) was fine. Planes were good, although wifi didn't work on either flight.

TXTransplant said:

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You can't pick your seat when you book with Delta. Once you have a confirmation number, you have to go to the AirFrance site and enter your booking info to pick a seat (and pay a fee).

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I don't recall that. We were premium economy so maybe that was why? This was 2024 so it could have changed. All my trips are also starting to all run together…

One more thing. CDG is an awful airport to travel to and from. The immigration lines are notoriously bad. Plan an extra couple of hours for that. Or, if you can ball out, get a VIP service to zip you thru. Our hotel arranged that for us when we came in but we came back from Normandy and didn't get VIP. I thought we were going to miss our flight.

use this for finding non stop flights.

https://www.flightsfrom.com/

And please don't confuse direct with non stop... hard to tell in the replies, it seems to be used interchangeably.

I'm 99% sure on the seat thing, but I can't verify to be certain. But I do remember it being difficult to determine which seats were the exit row. Whatever seat map was showing when we booked/selected seats did not explicitly state which seats were exit row. We had to do some research. They did cost extra, but not the $300 extra that United is charging these days for exit/bulkhead row seats.

Totally agree about CDG. Seemed like every plane back to the US was leaving within about a 30 min window. Security and gates were chaos. We also loaded the plane by bus - no jetway.

I also had to show my boarding pass to make a water/soda/snack purchase at the kiosk near our gate. So stupid.

If you have a stash of United miles I would just connect versus trying to make Air France work. And if you do end up flying direct I would book through Air France instead of Delta.

It's crazy that United doesn't have a direct flight from there, IAH has been the red-headed step child ever since Continental went away.

Paris is not a Star Alliance hub so apparently no direct IAH to CDG flight. Seems crazy.

I've also got a ton of AMEX and Chsae Sapphire points which supposedly transfer 1:1 to Air France. I'm concerned about the timing though...seeing a good flight I can buy with points and then transferring the points over in time to get the flight. If there's a glitch in timing and the flight no longer available when the points clear, I've pretty much watsed those points unless I can find another flight that works. Is this a valid concern? Or should we just connect via United?

My experience with Amex point transfers has always been instant but yah something could always happen. On American you can hold a miles redemption flight for 24 hours before paying, does AF or Delta have something similar?

If you get screwed you could always use the Flying Blue miles to book a Delta or other Sky Team flight somewhere.

I am almost certain there was an nonstop United flight 2-3 years ago....wonder when they canned it?

fire09 said:

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I am almost certain there was an nonstop United flight 2-3 years ago....wonder when they canned it?

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Continental had it prior to United merger but a few years in it went away so IAH passengers had to route through EWR, IAD or ORD.

My wife makes the IAH to Paris trip a few times per year for work and she has connected through IAD but then also Toronto and then just a few months ago Montreal via Air Canada (Star Alliance partner). One word of advice is on the return trip she ALWAYS not goes from CDG back to USA/Canada first, avoiding the connection from Paris over to Frankfort and then the United nonstop to IAH as that airport has been nothing but trouble for her.

Same experience for me as gigem wrote. Wife and I flew AF business class. Twas nice, but booking fees were very high.

Flew Air France IAH to Paris last November. It was Amex points booked through Virgin. Super easy process.