part 1 Virgin Atlantic Club House & Virgin Atlantic JFK-LHR
part 2 Air France LHR-CDG
part 3 Air France CDG-VIE
part 4 Le Meriden Vienna
part 5 KLM VIE-AMS
part 6 KLM AMS-HEL
part 7 Helsinki
part 8 Finnair HEL-CDG
part 9 Paris Sheraton CDG
part 10 Paris, France
part 11 Air France CDG-LHR
part 12 Virgin Clubhouse LHR & Virgin Atlantic LHR-JFK
AIR FRANCE
AF1780
Aircraft: AIRBUS 321
Actual seat:3C
Depart: CDG Paris Charles De Gaulle
Arrive: LHR London Heathrow
Sched.Departure: 1:25pm Actual Departure : 1:40pm
Sched.Arrival: 1:45pm Actual arrival: 1:29pm
After a morning workout and some work, I checked out of the Sheraton and walked over to terminal 2E to check in for my flight to London. I was greeted at the entrance to the Sky Priority check-in area and escorted to one of the counters. I was promptly checked through to LHR and handed my boarding pass. Through a little archway I turned left to to the sky priority Immigration and security check. There was absolutely no one in the immigration line, the officer was waiting for me to step up to the window, handed my passport and quickly exit stamp out of the the country and the EU. I headed towards the empty priority security, shoes stayed on. I am so happy that Skyteam has made it uniform across their alliance on using SkyPriority in red and not their own individual elite lanes. Air France had No1 or something like that as their elite lane, which I did not know when I first went via CDG.
Sky priority - Business class check-in
Sky priority - Business class check-in
Post security and Immigration
It was less than 10mins from walking out of the Sheraton, checkin, immigration and then security. So simple, so easy! Once through I headed down the elevator to -1 floor to the Air France Salon. The Salon was busy today. The lounge is ok but nothing like the lounge in 2E - Hall L. A glass of mandatory champagne, and some coffee, I had a look at the offerings and really nothing appetizing. They had cup of noodles so went with that, and sat down for about 20mins relaxing in the lounge.
champagne!!!
Air France Lounge 2E hall K
Lounge
Lounge
I decided to head to the gate, since it would be at the far end of 2E and when I got there, it literally was the last gate of 2E. Boarding had already commenced with Business class and Elite plus members. It was going to be a completely full flight. As I boarded the plane I could see that Business class was 90% full and interestingly, I was sitting in the last row of Business, row 3 and behind me were almost another 5-8 rows before the curtain. Later on before closing of the door, I looked back and saw every seat (including middle seat) occupied before the curtain, behind that I couldn't really see anything.
Doors closed we head out to the runway for take off. Once airborne within a minute, the crew began preparing for service on this short flight across the channel. Moments later the flight attendants were handing out lunch and I asked for some champagne which again was poured into a plastic cup, not even into the fake plastic champagne flute.
Now curiously the same tray of food for business class was handed out to the folks behind me and so on, but not all the way to the curtain. These passengers were not in Business class since every middle seat was taken, but why were they handing out trays to everyone, well until they ran out of trays??? Did the flight attendant make a mistake? The guys behind me looked surprised and were eager to cobble it up, me on the other hand did not find the food appealing, so I just ate the macaron and drank one glass of champagne, since I was not offered anymore after that. I applaud Air France for serving a meal on such a short flight, 38mins compared to airlines in the US but other than that, Air France in Business is below standard, especially compared to Finnair and even KLM.
Lunch
Even before trays were removed we were already on decent to LHR. 10mins later we were on the ground. A quick short flight, nothing special but excited for adventure to the Virgin Atlantic clubhouse and then on VS to JFK.