With Air France "TGVAir", can you check in the night before?

Question

I've booked a combined train + flight ticket with Air France, which involves taking a TGV to Paris CDG airport, then an onward flight. The TGV leaves very early in the morning.

I've been looking at the Air France page on TGVAir, and that says

If you are traveling by train to the TGV station at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport ... Collect your ticket at the tgvair counter in an SNCF train station

To collect your ticket, present your trip summary or a form of identification.

Your Check-In Deadline is set at 15 minutes before your train´s departure time.

Since the TGV leaves very early, I'd rather not have to get there at least 15 minutes before to check in. I'd much rather have the extra time in bed! I'm also not completely sure that the ticket office will be open that early, and if it is I doubt there'll be many people there, so there's always the risk of a wait if there's someone there first...

Given that I'm travelling through the departure station the night before anyway, is it possible for me to check in then, and return to the station in the morning armed with my tickets. Is that possible?

(In case it matters, the TGV leaves at 5.57am, and I'd be looking to check in at something like 6.30pm (18:30) the night before, so less than 12 hours before)

Answer 1

In Lille Europe at least, it is possible to collect a TGVAir ticket the evening before.

I headed to the Lille Europe ticket office, found the desk with the TGVAir sign, and explained I wanted to collect a ticket for very early the next morning. The person on the ticket desk took my booking reference, looked through a large pile of tickets for the next day which had already been printed out, and found mine. It was handed over without comment on it being the day before, but I was reminded to be there in time.

The fact that they had a large pile of TGVAir ticket for the next day already printed by the evening makes me think that it wouldn't be possible to collect the ticket a long time in advance. It seems they do print them, at Lille Europe at least, not that much in advance of when they're needed. However, they didn't think that collecting a 6am ticket at 6pm the night before was unusual or problematic, so it worked for me. Hopefully other SNCF stations operate the same!

Answer 2

First of all, there are a few conditions you should know.

According to the FAQ of online check-in, you are not allowed to check-in online for tgvair offer, unless you take the train from Strasbourg or Brussels. You will still have to go to the airport counter in these two cases.

If you take the train from Strasbourg and you want to get your tickets there, you will have to go to the specific Air France counter located 1 bis bd de Metz.

As for retrieving your tickets the day before, I could not find any authoritative information. The rule for self-service machines at the airport is to get your tickets on the day of travel only. For online check-in, it is possible from 30 hours before the flight. So I have no idea how it works for TGVAIR, but it is probably around that amount of time (i.e. if I were you I would not expect to get the ticket more than 24 hours before the trip).

I would suggest to give it a try the day before, in particular to locate the tgvair/Air France counter since it might not be possible to get your ticket from a random SNCF counter (this is unclear on their site as well as SNCF FAQ). You might want to check the opening time of the tgvair counter as it is not the same as the station's (e.g. in Lyon Part-Dieu it is open everyday from 5.30am to 8pm)

Answer 3

My personal experience with the TGVAir service (to/from Lorraine TGV station) would suggest that the ticket for the train part of the TGVAir combined journey must be retrieved from a TGVAir ticket booth (guichet) and cannot be obtained on-line. However, irrespective of how early in the morning at night or late the train might depart, the afore-mentioned ticket booth will be manned, thus allowing you to retrieve the ticket. Not so long ago I called AirFrance to check this.

Hence, if you want to sleep as much as possible, you would be able to do so. Keep in mind however the 15-minute window you must respect in order to retrieve the ticket. Quoting from the Air France website:

Check-in

• Your Check-In Deadline is set at 15 minutes before your train´s departure time.

I have also tried retrieving the ticket a full 20h in advance from the Lorraine TGV station, and succeeded in doing so. The staff were a bit puzzled as to why I might want to do that, my reason being the train strike on the departure date which might have caused the ticket office to be closed. The ticket was printed and ready to be collected even 20+hours before.