Flying La Premiere first time

Old Sep 9, 2016, 9:59 am
  #1  
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Flying La Premiere first time

This will be my first trip in La Premiere and I want to take advantage of it to it's fullest. Any suggestions would be most welcomed.

I have a few odd-ball things going on with my itinerary....

First I booked a separate ticket on DL from BHM to JFK (via ATL).
- Question - any way to link these two? And if I do, will I be greeted on the DL flight when landing?

Second, my original flight was JFK-LCY, but I bought a second throwaway ticket from CDG-LHR so it shows I have a connection in CDG so I can get into the lounge. (fingers crossed)

What happens when I arrive in CDG? And what are some not to be missed things in the lounge and/or during the whole trip?
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Old Sep 9, 2016, 2:31 pm
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It would be best if you posted your questions on the thread that you already created, which is the normal practice, rather than start a new thread for related questions on what's not to be missed. Just do a search and you'll find fairly exhaustive answers.

That said, there are many existing threads which also answer your questions on how to maximise the F experience.

On the other questions:

1) there is no way of merging separate PNRs. You can have them cross-referenced but it is of very little impact, for instance it would not protect you if your previous flight is late;

2) your choice of buying a "wasted" CDG-LHR flight just to use the P lounge after you landed in CDG whilst you are in fact flying from ORY strikes me as an extremely poor idea. In most European airports, and certainly for international areas - which is where the P lounge is - departures and arrivals are fully segregated. That means that once you are in the P lounge, you will not be able to just exit as you wish. You will need to go to the lounge people, find some lousy excuse to explain that your plans have changed, and get them to effectively call a police/security escort to let you out of the departure area. Besides, you will not only inconvenience everyone but make a fool of yourself because the typical P lounge crowding at any given point in time is between 1 and 10 people which means and all get a very personal service, which means that the agents will be very "personally" aware of what you have done, which is to use the P lounge under what amounts to a false pretence (something that will be very obvious to them when you ask to exit as they will see that you in fact have a flight from ORY).

So I would say that your first move if you want to have a great F experience is to immediately abandon that silly plan and get that wasted CDG-LHR refunded. AF people are not complete idiots and it would not be fitting to treat them as such.
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Old Sep 9, 2016, 3:27 pm
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While I thank you for taking the time to reply to my post, I would invite you to re-read what you wrote.

Your tone is in no way warranted nor is your condescending attitude.
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Old Sep 9, 2016, 3:42 pm
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Why on earth did you buy a separate CDG-LHR ticket instead of changing your JFK-CDG/ORY-LCY into JFK-CDG-LHR ? This is just crazy...
This separate ticket will not bring you into the P lounge and keep in mind that if you don't use your ORY-LCY leg, they might cancel your return ticket.

Regarding your connection in JFK, I am not aware of any airside transfer done by the AF P agents, especially knowing that you'll have to connect from T4 to T1.

What happens in CDG ? in your case (connecting to LCY from ORY), they will greet you at the arrival of the flight from JFK, drive you by limo and escort you through immigration, wait with you at baggage claim to collect your bags, eventually escort you to the arrival lounge in 2C if you want to shower, and that's it.

For the P lounge experience, it seems at that stage that you'll enjoy it only on your return trip from CDG. The not to be missed are a lunch or dinner and a massage.

For linking different PNR, as said by Orbitmic, it's not possible.
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Old Sep 9, 2016, 8:36 pm
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Originally Posted by ishihara
While I thank you for taking the time to reply to my post, I would invite you to re-read what you wrote.

Your tone is in no way warranted nor is your condescending attitude.
I don't think that Orbitmic is condescending or use an improper tone; he was just trying to help and you choose to attack him instead.
You are fairly new to FT, but it is against forum rules to post a similar topic in two different thread.

I will try to use softer words than Orbitmic and Goldorak, not to offend you. But what was the reason to book such a strange itinerary between NYC and LON???
If an award, then that could be changed to connect in CDG to LHR. If a paid ticket (at a discount fare), then the change fee should not be so horrendous.
If that is just a one-way ticket, then drop the ORY-LCY leg and use your CDG-LHR.
In any case Orbitmic and Goldorak provided the answers to your specific questions.

But frankly doing in one go:
BMH-ATL-JFK-CDG-ORY-LCY
with the very serious risk of a misconnect at any airport is weird. All that just to sample AF P in a 6+ flight. I hope at least that you are not on the A380 with its antique F seat.
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Old Sep 10, 2016, 3:27 am
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Originally Posted by ishihara
While I thank you for taking the time to reply to my post, I would invite you to re-read what you wrote.
Well, I have upon your suggestion, and while you may not like the substance of my advice, I can assure you that there was no condescendence intended but just a very genuine warning.

To continue related questions on existing threads and to conduct a search to check that your questions have not already been answered are just two of the main FT rules. I actually tried to say it nicely because if you browse around, you'll see that on many fora, people just say "you are not allowed to open a new thread etc" and stop the conversation there and I find this harsh especially on a relatively new poster, so I just tried to inform you about the rules in question and move on to answering your question.

The question of linking PNRs again, my answer is a statement of fact. That too is one of the most frequent questions asked on FT because it would be extremely useful to be able to do this in so many cases, but it is simply not possible to do more than cross-references, regardless of tickets and airlines and it never has any practical impact.

As for the throwaway, I'm sure that you thought it was a good way of experiencing the P lounge without the need to change your ticket (I'm very surprised by the change cost of $7000 btw, it is very unusual for a P ticket as connecting sectors book into full flex J anyway so you must have had a great deal and I assume the cost is due to some expensive fare recalculation), and I know that this is an idea that many fora float around for lounge purposes, but without going into normative questions which are not what I was discussing here, I simply answered you about the practicalities.

My first point, and I'll restate it again, is that once you enter the international section of most European airports, including CDG 2E, you cannot leave except by plane. There are plenty of reasons for that, including the fact that if you fly ATL-CDG-LHR, you will remain airside during your connection having bypassed the place where you can exit to immigration without ever entering Schengen territory. Once you want to leave the 2E departure area, you are therefore asking to enter the Schengen territory (in this case France) from a place which has no inbound passport control set up. This is both technically impossible and something that typically (and I'm not saying it is right or wrong, just that it is the case) attracts great suspicion on the part of immigration authorities because, just as though you were trying to cross a border away from border stations after passing one and ignoring it to continue your way, they will suspect the worst before considering more innocent explanations. In some airports, like LHR T5, there are hourly escorts for anyone who has entered the terminal by mistake but no such thing at CDG so quite literally, what staff have to do is call the police to escort people through doors that are not open to the public back to a place where they can be immigration cleared. It is neither convenient (it may take a while before people are available to escort you and they will not look at this with sympathy) nor easy (you are not in control), and it can even result in a more thorough immigration check than what a - presumably - US citizen just entering France for a holiday (let alone to merely take another flight from ORY!) could expect. For comparison purposes, there are very few cases where people can transit in the US without going through immigration (the LHR-AKL NZ flight via LAX being one) and I let you imagine how the US CBP react when someone follows that route with a continuing BP to AKL and then once onboard are saying that they want to enter the US instead. There have been a few examples reported on FT (typically people who found a great promotional deal on that flight to NZ or beyond which was in fact cheaper than just flying to/from LAX) and they are genuine horror stories.

My second point was about the awkwardness of the situation, and again, I appreciate that you might not like the substance of what I said, but I was trying to attract your attention to the fact that the P lounge is not a normal lounge and that the situation would, in my view, prove very embarrassing as a result. Again, regardless of the normative merits of your plans, in a normal lounge, there are quite literally hundreds of people. If you did this, for instance, to enter the normal AF J lounge, you'd then go to a lounge agent who wouldn't even know who you are because they have checked in dozens of other people so however unpleasant the exit because of the points above, it would at least be fairly anonymous. The P lounge is entirely different. Much of the time it is entirely empty and the lounge staff are precisely paid to know exactly who to expect, where they come from and where they are going. The maximum occupancy I have personally seen was 4 people including myself and my partner. I heard that it sometimes goes up to 10 at busy times but never really more than that (in fact, the lounge is relatively small). So someone from the P lounge will be coming to fetch you at the aircraft, and tell you that as you are flying from ORY they will take you to immigration and to the AF coach to ORY or would you like to use the arrivals lounge first. Are you going to tell them that you won't take the ORY flight but will take a CDG-LHR flight instead then at the risk of your return ticket being cancelled? Or are you letting them take you to immigration and the coach as planned, and then just turn back, go to check in, security, back to the P lounge where you might very well face the same person who took you to the coach, and if not someone who will tell you that you are not allowed in this lounge with your CDG-LHR ticket, at which point you will have to explain that you are coming on your arrival in P, at which point the agent will look up your reservation, based on its details ask what the deal is with your ORY-LCY flight in a few hours and whether his/her colleague did not come to fetch you at from your previous flight as they were supposed to etc. A few hours later, you will go back to the same person, telling them that you are not going to LHR after all but will instead take the ORY-LCY you were also booked on and which you just said you would not take a short while before? The typical P lounge experience is that one person takes care of you from beginning to end, almost a bit like a mix between a PA and a butler. It is one thing to try and do what you want in a normal, anonymous lounge situation, but it is another to have to tell inconsistent stories to the same person, who is actually attentive and knowledgeable about your reservation details from the start, and as I said even if you do not like it, who will very quickly understand the "real" story when you ask to leave the lounge after all.

So feel free to think of me as the bad condescending guy, I do not mind, but unfortunately, if you press ahead with your plan, I have little doubt that on the day, you will realise exactly what I actually meant and why I warned you about it the way I did.
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Old Sep 10, 2016, 4:37 am
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The more I read your story in your two related posts, the more unbelievable it becomes. or let's say "crazy" to use Goldorak's word.
You mention an 8 hour transfer between CDG and ORY. As the last LCY flight departs around 5pm, that means that you will arrive on AF7 (the antique A380 F seats). If you MUST use that LCY flight, it probably means that you had bartered an award and cannot change the ORY-LCY. But it was truly "crazy" to get it in the first place. A direct ATL-LHR in DL J with a nice flat bed would have saved so much time and fatigue. Even if that is a nonchangeable paid ticket at dirt-cheap price, that was really a mistake.
If you bought a return ticket, then you are now stuck. Why don't you rather enjoy a few hours in Paris, especially as you have only hand luggage (although probably heavy one).
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Old Sep 10, 2016, 5:09 am
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Originally Posted by orbitmic
My first point, and I'll restate it again, is that once you enter the international section of most European airports, including CDG 2E, you cannot leave except by plane. There are plenty of reasons for that, including the fact that if you fly ATL-CDG-LHR, you will remain airside during your connection having bypassed the place where you can exit to immigration without ever entering Schengen territory. Once you want to leave the 2E departure area, you are therefore asking to enter the Schengen territory (in this case France) from a place which has no inbound passport control set up. This is both technically impossible and something that typically (and I'm not saying it is right or wrong, just that it is the case) attracts great suspicion on the part of immigration authorities because, just as though you were trying to cross a border away from border stations after passing one and ignoring it to continue your way, they will suspect the worst before considering more innocent explanations. In some airports, like LHR T5, there are hourly escorts for anyone who has entered the terminal by mistake but no such thing at CDG so quite literally, what staff have to do is call the police to escort people through doors that are not open to the public back to a place where they can be immigration cleared. It is neither convenient (it may take a while before people are available to escort you and they will not look at this with sympathy) nor easy (you are not in control), and it can even result in a more thorough immigration check than what a - presumably - US citizen just entering France for a holiday (let alone to merely take another flight from ORY!) could expect.
completely agree with you on all points, but just have to point something out from experience.

earlier this year, i was taking an international flight leaving CDG (not transit, but i would assume its the same), right after i passed both border passport control AND security check, i realized that i had lost 1 of my 2 phones. i clearly remembered that it was with me at the airport prior to check-in. at this point, i approached a random staff who happened to walk by me, and asked how i could get back on the land-side of the airport to hopefully find my phone (i was guessing it had slipped out of my pocket while i was sitting and waiting for check-in to start).

she pointed me to a pathway right next to the security where i just entered from, and that lead me right out to the shuttle tram thingy which i took after leaving border control and before security check (can't remember which terminal). taking the opposite direction on the shuttle leads to arrival immigration where i presented my passport and re-entered paris easily, telling the border customs officer that i was going back out to look for a lost personal item, and was let through.

so from my experience, exiting airside isn't that difficult, of course all this is moot if the different terminals have different paths set up. but in my case, there is no obvious route to do a u-turn out, but a almost obscure pathway right next to the regular security checkpoint before entering airside that leads (via shuttle) right to arrival immigration which i only noticed after the staff pointed it out to me.
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Old Sep 10, 2016, 5:18 am
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Originally Posted by natcin
completely agree with you on all points, but just have to point something out from experience.

earlier this year, i was taking an international flight leaving CDG (not transit, but i would assume its the same), right after i passed both border passport control AND security check, i realized that i had lost 1 of my 2 phones. i clearly remembered that it was with me at the airport prior to check-in. at this point, i approached a random staff who happened to walk by me, and asked how i could get back on the land-side of the airport to hopefully find my phone (i was guessing it had slipped out of my pocket while i was sitting and waiting for check-in to start).

she pointed me to a pathway right next to the security where i just entered from, and that lead me right out to the shuttle tram thingy which i took after leaving border control and before security check (can't remember which terminal). taking the opposite direction on the shuttle leads to arrival immigration where i presented my passport and re-entered paris easily, telling the border customs officer that i was going back out to look for a lost personal item, and was let through.

so from my experience, exiting airside isn't that difficult, of course all this is moot if the different terminals have different paths set up. but in my case, there is no obvious route to do a u-turn out, but a almost obscure pathway right next to the regular security checkpoint before entering airside that leads (via shuttle) right to arrival immigration which i only noticed after the staff pointed it out to me.
I suspect that you would have been at the L or M gates, which indeed are only accessible through the shuttle which leaves from the main 2E check in dispatch area. I never thought of it but indeed, in that case you could use the shuttle which goes in the other direction towards immigration even thought this is certainly not an orthodox solution! (PS: also, were you already airside, inside the L/M gates or could you only do it before going there? Trying to visualise the path there!)

However, this would not work for the P lounge which is at the K gates (the main part of 2E. There is no shuttle from the main terminal, only from the transit area which is common with arrivals.
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Old Sep 10, 2016, 5:34 am
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^ yea thats what i thought was probably the case as i was writing that as well, but the staff i spoke to didn't even flinch or hesitate when i said i wanted to exit airside. so perhaps there might be some pathway that leads downstairs to where the arrival immigration is.

this is considering that the shuttle leads back to the bottom level of the main part of 2E where you mentioned that the P lounge is any way, so wouldn't be surprised if there is a one-way elevator or stairs leading back down to arrivals immigration.

i was already airside. my exact path was this:

checked in, got boarding pass
headed to international passport control to have my passport stamped to 'leave' schengen
took the shuttle to security check point
went through security check point (that was when i realized i lost my phone, but i went through with security anyway as i didn't want to hold up the line at the back searching through my bags)
after i passed security, i searched through my bags and confirmed that i had lost it
at this point (I'm standing in front of all the duty free shops) i was looking for a way back into land-side and the staff walked past me and thats when she pointed to a small gateway right next to the very security check area where i had passed through

hope that helps visualize the path! so the only thing left for me to do really was head to the boarding gate and board my plane. this was on a CDG-PVG AF flight

Last edited by natcin; Sep 10, 2016 at 6:21 am
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Old Sep 10, 2016, 6:50 am
  #11  
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Originally Posted by brunos
I hope at least that you are not on the A380 with its antique F seat.
Speak for yourself. The seat is hardly antique and IMHO it is just as good as the new BEST seat in the most important aspect. I slept comfortably for almost the entire flights in both seats. Sure the privacy is better with BEST, but the A380 P seat is very comfortable. To me at least.
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Old Sep 10, 2016, 8:15 am
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Originally Posted by natcin
i was already airside. my exact path was this:

checked in, got boarding pass
headed to international passport control to have my passport stamped to 'leave' schengen
took the shuttle to security check point
went through security check point (that was when i realized i lost my phone, but i went through with security anyway as i didn't want to hold up the line at the back searching through my bags)
after i passed security, i searched through my bags and confirmed that i had lost it
at this point (I'm standing in front of all the duty free shops) i was looking for a way back into land-side and the staff walked past me and thats when she pointed to a small gateway right next to the very security check area where i had passed through

hope that helps visualize the path! so the only thing left for me to do really was head to the boarding gate and board my plane. this was on a CDG-PVG AF flight
I have to agree with that obscure path back to immigration from Airside.
I used it in March when flying CDG-DUB on the last flight of the day from 2E-L, the original plane was swapped for a smaller one and they needed volunteers to be denied boarding and leave the next morning. I volunteered, got the 300 and the Mercure hotel voucher, and then had to find my way back to landside. Someone from the staff of the security checkpoint pointed me to this narrow path, then onto the Lisa subway and finally border control
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Old Sep 10, 2016, 9:35 am
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Originally Posted by natcin
this is considering that the shuttle leads back to the bottom level of the main part of 2E where you mentioned that the P lounge is any way, so wouldn't be surprised if there is a one-way elevator or stairs leading back down to arrivals immigration.
Yes, it certainly helps visualise. I don't think that there is anything similar in the K gates. From L/M you benefit from the loophole of LISA which indeed serves both to bring people from check in to L departures, and from those to immigration, but the P lounge is firmly in the departure area of the K gates. The only lift I can think of takes you to/from the cars where there is the P security check point, but that does not connect to arrivals for which drop off is a different place.
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Old Sep 10, 2016, 9:38 am
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Originally Posted by ishihara
Second, my original flight was JFK-LCY, but I bought a second throwaway ticket from CDG-LHR so it shows I have a connection in CDG so I can get into the lounge. (fingers crossed)
Is your original booking just JFK-CDG//ORY-LCY, or does it include a return? If so, that will be cancelled if you miss the ORY-LCY segment.
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Old Sep 10, 2016, 2:43 pm
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I've seen up to 20 people in the Premiere Salon, spread between the restaurant (most tables occupied), the lounge part towards the right/back, 1-2 people in the work area, etc. This was for an 11am departure back in June, haven't been to the lounge since.

There is a protocol for letting people out, there in fact must be, to deal with cancelled departures. But doing it because a passenger is playing games with fake tickets will definitely lead to nasty looks. Nothing they can do about it, but it'll raise eyebrows.

Lastly, I don't get the point to book such a complicated ticket only to be in the P lounge. Of course, if one has to transfer and wait for a connecting plane anyway or if one is leaving from Paris anyway, then the P lounge is by far the very best way to spend that time. But to make it a destination in its own right? I fail to get it, it's just an airport lounge.
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