So .... who wants to visit GA

[DFW]

18. You don't have a lot of options if you want to land in Düsseldorf

I hate taking overnight flights and then having to go through security again, wait 2 hours, and take another one hour flight. After an overnight flight, all I want to do is rest.

There only 3 viable options from the east (I was leaving from Washington) to Düsseldorf: NYC area, Chicago or Atlanta--either that or fly directly out of Washington to Europe and do the hated change of planes after the long haul. If you do this a lot, as I do, you know that if you MUST change planes, you want to do it early in the trip, and have the longest leg of the trip land you at your final destination. As I flew over on Air France, and I am Platinum for life with them, I saved thousands of euros by doing the round trip with them. One way fares are insanely expensive except on Air Berlin. Air France doesn't fly nonstop to Düsseldorf from North America except as a codeshare with Delta out of Atlanta. Otherwise, it's Air Berlin or Lufthansa from New York or American out of Chicago. Lufthansa may have kept the Chicago route, too--I haven't kept track of them. I gave up on them years ago. After a few "well, that's just your tough luck" responses to missed connections that were their fault, I needed to find an airline that was willing to do something about it. Much to my surprise (this is going back over 15 years), that was Air France.

To make the connection out of DC, it doesn't change much if you fly an hour to JFK, a commuter to Newark, or an hour and 20 minutes to either Chicago or Atlanta. So, while I did have the option of taking an Air France plane, with service ten times better than Delta, directly to Paris from Dulles, I would have had to arrive in Paris at 6:00 AM, walk a mile to immigration and go through security again with the morning business rush at De Gaulle. That's what I usually do, but leaving Atlanta at 5 PM and landing directly in Düsseldorf was well worth the lack of a bigger film selection.