Greetings everyone and all the best in New Year!

I'm not as well traveled as some of you here on this forum, nor do I keep up with the flight safety regulations changes, so I look forward to hearing your comments on the following.

Recently I was on the Air France short haul CDG bound flight. So I'm sitting in 1F, single row of BC A319-100. Half an hour earlier I was the only one in business so I'm quite glad when a nice French lady turns up taking 1A (for some reason I always feel awkward with just one row in use when I'm the only one in business and the plane is full).

Anyway, once boarding is completed and the seat belt sign is switched ON she stands up and moves forward to - what I thought at the time - was the toilet. I wonder for a couple of minutes why people do that, and then I forget about it.

That is until several minutes later when I hear the engines roaring as we line up for take off and I notice she still hasn't returned. The purser seems to go about his duties as normal and once I look up I see the lavatory lights indicating vacant, so I start questioning myself - perhaps she wasn't meant to be in business in the first place, had to move to the back and I just didn't notice?

We take off, seatbelt sign is switched off, I go and use the toilet (which is indeed vacant), drink service starts, I settle down, and suddenly there she goes from behind the front curtain! She WAS in the cockpit during take off.

Ok then, I have something else to think about! Perhaps she was assessing the pilot? But then how? She's not in the uniform. Ok. Then the pilot (or the first officer, don't know) comes out twice during the flight to check up on her in a very cordial, personal way.

Once we get close to CDG and the decent starts the purser approaches her and - judging by his body language - says "Are you ready to go back in?". She smiles, puts away her glass with what seems to be a red wine, unfastens her seatbelt and there she goes in to the cockpit again!

During landing (which wasn't the worst I've had by any means but still bumpy and performed in a poor weather) the only thing I could focus on was her presence in the cockpit and that if we crash landed the narrator in the Air Crash Investigations would call her the only thing you could call her - "a distraction".

So yeah, I'm not some sort of "safety Jeff" ruining everyone's time by telling them they can't play ball here for a number of hazardous reasons, but even to me this did not feel right, to say the least. And I know it's irrational but given the history no matter what I do I can't get as comfortable and relaxed on any Air France flight as much as I can on KLM, BA or LH for that matter, and this event ain't going to help me with this!

And yes, I do kick myself for not asking the purser on the spot what the hell is happening here, but neither did anyone else and I'm sure people further back must have had a much better view of this than me (due to the position of the bulkhead I did not actually see her entering the cockpit, and she did not come out before we had to disembark, but obviously she did not disappear into thin air!).

Anyway, off to the public now, let me know what you think.