Thanks for all of the positive comments!
Carfield - I think I kept the menus - so I'll try and dig them out for you!
Anyway, on to AF. They did serve us a breakfast on the Manchester --> Paris flight although it wasn't much. However, I wasn't too impressed with the drinks selection. If my memory serves me correctly, they didn't have any orange juice - I don't think they ran out since the flight was almost empty. For breakfast time, this seems a little ridiculous - anyway, that's a small complaint! The flight boarded late and I think left a few minutes late - perhaps 15 minutes because of the incoming flight being delayed. Anyway, we got to CDG more or less on-time.
Although CDG's relatively new Terminal Two is nice and modern. I wasn't all that impressed with it's organization. It would be fine if you start out in Paris because the walk from check-in to the gate is minimal, but to connect there, it is a bit of a pain. If you're connecting flight is in a diffent hall which the likelihood of it being so is quite high, you have to either take a bus which is air-side or go land-side and walk. After taking the bus, they made us go through security again - even though we hadn't left the conrolled area - I thought that was a little strange. I had to take another bus - more like people-mover as the exit attached to the airplane door - to get to the aircraft.
The plane took off about an hour late - they made no announcements about the reasons for the delay and we ended up arriving at Dulles about forty-five minutes late.
The plane was an A340 which I'm a big fan of. I've taken with LH a couple of times before and actually prefer it to the 777 because it's that much smaller. The seats had an acceptable amount of legroom.
I had a vegetarian lunch which was a pasta lasagna type dish. Salad was good and the wine was also good. Again, I'll try to retrieve the menu for you, Carfield!
The pre-landing snack was a bit of a joke in my opinion. It consisted of a glass of water, some canned fruit and a small cheese sandwich. The sandwich was absolutely minute - it can't have been more than a fifth of a slice. Some meal!
In-flight entertainment was acceptable. The movie was the Thomas Crown Affair which although it is a good movie, I've seen 3 times in the past month on a plane! The news and sports programs were in English, but everything else seemed to be in French.
The FAs were nice and professional, but they insist upon saying everything in French the first time even though they know you're English-speaking. This is nothing against the FAs since this is probably the way they're trained and is typical of French patriotism!!
Overall, it was an average flight and I have nothing to complain about it. However, with that said, I am still disappointed about DL jeopardizing SR and its Qualiflyer allies in favor of AF. If you combined all of the old Qualiflyer plus its partners, I think their route network would be comparable to AF and the quality of service would exceed that (probably even in SN's case.) Anyway, with the decision they've made, DL will probably lose more of their partners because of their links to SR and Qualiflyer: TP and Malev. Also, can the SAA partnership last that long given the fact that it's partially owned by SR??
More to come ...