I heard about the call for a Monday strike on the RER B line while listening to the radio on Saturday morning, just before leaving for the meet-up.

Since RER B isn't on my daily commute, I forgot about it and didn't realize some ETribbers would rely on it to head to the airport on Monday... <kicking myself>

At least, the à Paris children were delighted to have Izzy one more night!

I'm not surprised about the flight and I don't think it has anything to do with Air France or American or United: there are 3 sorts of flights: domestic, international and US-bound international (a fourth may be to Israel). On this last sort, the various security checks are so cumbersome, and have gotten worse and worse, that airport ground staff tend to play it safe by applying the "last time for check-in or you'll be denied boarding" rule.

Had you flown to Berlin or Rome: no problem, most likely.

Another aggravating factor for CDG airport: not enough gates on the terminals, so they're busing passengers to and from aircrafts, including long haul flights, not only puddle hoppers. It happened to me the 2 last times I came back from SFO, and because of that they probably need to add a good 15 to 20 mn to their time constraints.