France's rail unions have a renewable strike notice through September — is your CDG-Paris transfer still safe?

France's biggest rail unions filed a strike notice back in May that runs, renewable in 24-hour blocks, from 12 June all the way to 1 September — no fixed dates, no set pattern, just the right to walk out with 48–72 hours' notice at any point across the entire summer. It has already produced a surprise Normandy strike over the 31 July–2 August holiday weekend and forced SNCF to suspend TGVs south of Bordeaux during last week's wildfires. The notice explicitly covers RER and Transilien services, which includes the RER B — the line that gets you from Charles de Gaulle into central Paris. With Cathay Pacific and Air France running roughly 14 non-stop flights a week between Hong Kong and CDG, that's the one leg of the trip most travellers never think to plan around, and this summer it's the least predictable part of the journey.

What's actually happening

Four unions — CGT Cheminots, UNSA Ferroviaire, SUD-Rail and CFDT Cheminots — filed the joint notice on 6 May over pay (a 2.57% 2026 raise they call below inflation), internal reorganisation and working conditions. Because it's renewable rather than a single fixed date, SNCF can face a walkout on any day through 1 September with only 48–72 hours' published notice — the opposite of the week-ahead warning a traditional French rail strike usually gives. That unpredictability, not any single strike day, is the real risk: you can check SNCF's status page a week before you fly and still land into a disruption called after you boarded.

Why the CDG leg matters more than people assume

A 12-hour-45-minute flight from Hong Kong is the easy part — Cathay and Air France between them put a non-stop into CDG roughly twice a day. What happens after landing is where this strike notice bites: the RER B, the direct rail link into central Paris, is SNCF-operated and sits inside the strike's scope. If it's suspended the day you land, the fallback is the flat-rate taxi — a mandatory €56 to the Right Bank or €65 to the Left Bank, versus the RER B's roughly €11.80 fare. Not catastrophic for one trip, but the kind of gap that changes the maths if it also disrupts an onward TGV you'd booked to reach, say, Lyon or Bordeaux.

What a disrupted connection actually costs

The real exposure isn't the taxi fare — it's an unplanned Paris night if your onward train gets cancelled and the next available seat is the following morning. Mid-range Paris hotels are running around €165 a night this summer, plus the city's tourist tax, which tops out at €15.93 for palace-tier stays and sits closer to €11.70 for a standard four- or five-star room. Call it €175–181 all in, or roughly HK$1,585–1,640 at current rates (€1 ≈ HK$9.05) — for one unplanned night, before you've touched whatever the rest of the itinerary already cost.

Still worth it?

None of this is a reason to skip Paris — the city's value against its own history hasn't shifted, and most days this summer the trains have run fine. What's changed is that "check before you fly" isn't enough this year; the notice keeps the risk window open with almost no warning right through September. Book the RER B ticket only on arrival, keep the €56–65 taxi fare as a contingency line rather than a splurge, and build a half-day buffer around any onward TGV instead of a tight change. Compare France's current pricing against its own history on the destination page before you lock in a tight connection.