Hi my friends, it's time for another trip report. This time about traveling on AF La Première from ZRH to SIN and return. For this trip, I used 160K Flying Blue miles – booked just before the dreaded April 1 changes to the program. Due to low availability at the time of booking, my wife could only get a Business Class (Affaires) award, but we planned to swap seats each way. We added a Jetstar return flight from SIN to MNL to complete our journey.
PART 1: ZRH-CDG and La Première lounge at CDG
a) Routing, airlines and seat assignments
ZRH-CDG AF5109, C, ARJ85, 1A, 2A → swapped to 2A and 2C on board due to better comfort
CDG-SIN AF256, P/C, B77W *, 2L, 4L → swapped to 2E and 2F (!) on board by Chief Purser
SIN-MNL 3K 561, Y, A320, 4E, 4F
* = according to seatguru
b) @ ZRH
OLCI for the flight worked exactly 30 hours before departure, but once again there were two issues: OLCI on the AF website didn't work, so I went to the KLM site where there was no seat map for the B77W. Not that this mattered because our seats were already assigned, however, somebody else would probably not have been able to select a different seat.
We were quite early at the airport, so there were almost no people at the check-in counters. ZRH as an AF outpost would not wrap our checked bags as they do in CDG for La Première passengers; the check-in clerk did actually apologize for this! When I asked, how our transfer at CDG would be managed – being me in La Première and my wife in Affaires – the clerk wouldn't know but referred us to the AF/KL ticket desk. There, a friendly lady took her time to call CDG explaining our situation, with the positive result that we would be met at the parking stand upon our arrival and transferred to the first class lounge.
With this good news, our trip started off very positive, indeed, and we headed to the lounge. This time, I didn't take pictures of the ZRH lounge, it's not really worth it anyway. The usual snacks and drinks were offered, the only recent changes were the newly installed HP computers for surfing the web. WiFi is not free of charge in the lounge! There was an announcement for our flight, so we headed through security in Terminal B to access the bus gate.
c) AF5109 Stats: (not much available) www.flightstats.com
Boarding started on time at 7:15 p.m., and unlike on another trip I made earlier this year, there was more than just one bus available for boarding which sped up the process remarkably. We were on the 2nd bus and reached the plane after a short ride around the terminal building.
Boarding of Cityjet ARJ85 at ZRH Terminal B
Bus boarding isn't my favorite way of entering an aircraft, but also has it's advantages: the possibility of plane spotting:
A Swiss A 320 turning into Terminal A
We were greeted by the friendly crew and were offered to sit together because the load in Affaires was quite low, only 7 or so passengers. We chose row 2 seats A and C. Rows 1 and 2 on the ARJ85 have immovable armrests, so row 3 would have been the best choice, but the seats there were already occupied.
Food options weren't that great, I chose the offering for picture taking reasons only. We were to have a much nicer dinner once we arrived in Paris.
Cityjet dinner in Affaires
The bread was cold and hard, I ate just a bit with cheese and a Perrier.
Hard and cold bread
Only edible with cheese and Perrier
The flight itself was uneventful and despite the quite bad weather all the way from ZRH to CDG we departed and arrived pretty much on time. Our parking stand was just in front Terminal 2G, the Schengen terminal which is a real improvement because it means less bussing around CDG. Right after we parked and the stairs were attached, we were called to contact the ground staff waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs.
A very nice female AF attendant greeted us welcome to Paris and drove us in an Infinity SUV to the First Class lounge.
Infinity FX model
d) @ CDG
There was a private security checkpoint at the entrance of the lounge (airside) with actually very friendly staff. After security, an elevator brought us up to the main lounge which is huge and spacious and just fantastic!
At the air-side entrance of the lounge
Because we were about to leave Schengen, our passports were taken one of the lounge attendants and soon after brought back by a huge police frontière guy with a smile. There weren't many people in the lounge, we we enjoyed a little tour of the lounge before we stopped at the well-stocked bar for a glass of champagne and a snack.
The "bar rouge" inside
The dining area is in the center of the lounge, there's à la carte food available as well as a buffet which is behind the center wall in the picture:
Dining hall with buffet at the back wall
We finished our drinks at the bar then went to our table for the dinner.
Nice rosé Champagne …
… and nice decoration, too
Food is really, really good, prepared by Alain Ducasse. We had a shrimp salad and a cold tomato soup for starters and chicken and veal medallion for the main, all extremely tasty.
Shrimp salad
Tomato soup glacée
Chicken à la Provençale
Veal medaillon rosé
The interior of the lounge is all shaped round, even the bathrooms. There are many magazines and books, plenty to read for people with a long layover. There has to be free WiFi, but we were both too busy exploring the lounge, eating and drinking to check this out.
Magazines and books
Bathroom design
Time flew buy, and at about 10.45 p.m. we were again escorted to our flight to SIN. We had the same car and driver again, we enjoyed the 10 minutes ride to the gate. The only point one could find a little bit negative is, that the car brings you to the bottom of the gate where you have to climb the stairs to the jet-bridge. I'm sure, there's an elevator, but us young sports climbed the stairs …