We have always written that Russian citizens do not need a visa to transit through Paris airport on a single ticket. Now we have to warn you that in some cases a visa will be required, even if your connection is provided by the airline.
Do you have a Russian passport and are you traveling from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Turkey or Egypt in transit through Paris? You must have a Schengen visa or a French airport transit visa type «A»! No matter what.
Open the French visa websitecenter. The transit condition described there — «You do not leave the international transit area at an airport while awaiting a connection to a flight to your final destination country, and the final destination country is outside the Schengen area.» For most EU airports, a transit visa is not required. But the site still says that if you are traveling through Paris from the above countries, you need a visa. We do not know when the mention of organized transfers disappeared from the list of exceptions.
This site also allows you to check whether you need a transit visa. If indicate Russian citizenship and country of departure — one of those we cited above, the site will inform you that a transit visa is needed, and without any conditions.
At the same time, a transit visa is not needed if you have a visa or residence permit of the USA, Canada, Japan, as well as overseas countries and territories of the Netherlands (Aruba, Curacao, Sint Maarten, Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius), regardless of the airport of departure and airport of arrival located outside the Schengen zone.
There are currently no direct flights from Russia to France. Air France offers good prices on tickets to third countries, especially overseas, with connections in Paris. For Russians, the most suitable flights are those departing from Istanbul and Tbilisi, because they are the easiest to get to from Russia. But it is for these flights that a visa is required.
Getting from Moscow to Istanbul is easy and inexpensive. Turkish Airlines direct flights from Istanbul to Mexico City and Cancun are extremely expensive. An excellent alternative to them — connecting flights from Istanbul to Mexico via Europe. But not through Paris.
Our readers are reporting that Russians are being denied boarding on connecting Air France flights without a transit or Schengen visa. Even if there is only one ticket. There are similar messages from citizens of Belarus, although the website of the French Visa Application Center does not mention at all that Belarusians need a transit visa.
Be careful! Before you buy a valid ticket in Paris, check which country your flight is departing from. The ticket seller or airline is not required to notify the passenger of the visa criteria for the itinerary. This means that if you are denied boarding due to the lack of a visa, you are not required to return the money for your ticket, although major airlines usually do. You will learn about the refusal before boarding the flight to Paris and are unlikely to be able to convince the airline. All appeals for collective resistance to the arbitrariness of airlines usually end in nothing.