Review of Air France flight Paris → St Denis in Economy

Hi!

Since I have to renew my Gold status on Flight-Report and I have some time to kill, I figured that I could translate my adventures of the year in English. In March I had the pleasure of visiting la Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean.

These flights were booked in February for a departure in March, at a "sale" price of 798€ (these flights are really expensive, >1k€ in the summer time) with Air France. Due to the strikes that struck France at this time, I did not want to include a TGV segment and chose instead to drive to Paris and park at a friend's place. That friend will also join me on this trip and he's also a Flight-Reporter, Tango_Bravo_380 aka Ben.

Our routing is quite simple in the end:

After an hour drive, we finally arrive at Paris-Orly Airport around 3 hours before departure.

Drop off went smoothly and we get a last bit of fresh air before our 11 hour flight to l'Ile Intense.

We easily make our way into Orly 3, which will be today's departure terminal.

Quite a lot of European and French destinations listed this evening, as well as a few flights to la Réunion with Corsair, French Bee and our flight with Air France.

Again a nice experience at the check-in/drop off counter, with a smiling employee taking care of us.

15.9kg today for my luggage, meaning that I can bring some Rum back home in a week ;)

We then make our way to the security screening. As you can see, no queues are expected this evening with only two non-Schengen flights scheduled to depart.
All flights to the French Overseas Départments are non-Schengen and require to go through Passport Control.

And we're through security in less than 10 minutes.
A stroll through the duty free is mandatory here.

We then go through passport control, in a breeze.

Oh, that's why: we're the only flight remaining here!

Let's head to the Air France Lounge before our flight.

The lounge is designed in the same way the other new and refurbished lounges from AF are, with a nice Champagne Bar in the middle of the place.

There's enough seating for the night flight to la Réunion, it might be more crowded in the mornings when flights to Fort de France, Cayenne and Pointe-à-Pitre all leave around the same time.

Talking about Champagne, let's celebrate our holiday!

As we say, it's apéro time :)

Some cold cuts are available as a starter.

A couple of minutes later, the hot dishes are made available (starting from 19:00)
Here we have some pasta with mushrooms and a famous french dish the "blanquette de veau", a typical veal stew.

As always with Air France the wine list is quite nice.

I'm not a huge dessert fan, so here's the selection which I admit is quite large.

A nice touch from Air France in this lounge with a selection of rums from the Caribbean Islands and from la Réunion with Rivière du Mât.

After two nice hours in the lounge, we head to the departure lounge, where boarding for our flight just started.

Here's our ride for the night, F-GZNO, an 11 year-old Boeing 777-300ER. Configuration is quite dense, with only 14 Business Class, 28 Premium Economy and 430 Economy seats. 472 in total.

Boarding began on time and we boarded with Group 1-2 which are SkyPriority with Air France. This line remains open during boarding to SkyPriority holders. SP line is strictly enforced this evening with a very nice agent filtering the lines upon arrival at the gate.

I don't know if it's a privilege but we get to board through the front door. Maybe a way for AF to showcase their Business Class to frequent flyers who fly Y ^^

And to be fair, the wow effect when entering the cabin is quite huge: this looks nice!!! Too bad it's so damn expensive ^^
An upgrade was possible against 799€… well grazie ma non grazie as Italians would say ^^

Premium Economy doesn't look that nice with these cradle seats.

And the "bétaillère" as it is known for here in France… Economy class with my seat, 10L, a bulkhead one.

Another great seat for those who need more legroom would be 11H as you won't have a seat in front of you. However this seat has a massive downside as everyone will bump into you when going through the cabin.

Seat pitch is quite nice at the bulkhead, yet you can't stretch your legs.

Hard to believe you're in Economy when you're almost at the front of the plane ^^

IFE is located on the bulkhead, which I'm not a fan of, since it's quite far away from the seat. Would've been better in the armrest.

The safety card

My seat neighbour asked the flight attendant for some earplugs, I also got a pair.

Pushback was 15 minutes late, at 21:15.

Soon after the safety video was shown

Taxi at Orly is usually quite short, especially at this time of day.

Air France 777s are equipped with cameras on board, such a shame they didn't fit the 787 as well…

Anyway, we're ready to go at 21:26.

Off we go! Flight time to day will be approx. 10 hours and 30 minutes.

Soon after take off we get our meal. As usual the choice is limited to chicken or pasta. I went for the chicken, which was served with some polenta, mushrooms and "sauce poulette" a creamy mushroom sauce.
All in all, I must say the food tasted nice but with only 220g, it's really small if you haven't eaten before the flight. My neighbour was very hungry and I was happy to give away my dessert which is the standard AF dessert for the last 10 years or so.

My neighbour went for some red wine, not a very good option to be honest in Economy… Champagne is complimentary on Air France even in Economy so I went for that instead :)

Here's the Champagne bottle.

I then started a movie. Air France has a large selection of movies, TV shows and music. They also offer some classic movies like "La Grande Vadrouille" and I find that awesome!

I then went for a stroll around the cabin, quite full but still a few empty seats. Busy season for La Réunion is actually during the European summer because of the colder temperatures there. Of course, the French public holidays are also a busy time to travel there.

A small bar has been set up in the rear-end galley with sweets and some drinks.

4 hours of sleep later and we're flying over Somalia.

I then went again for 2 hour nap. As always with Air France, the lights go on about an hour and 45 minutes before landing. A nice blue-white-red (national colours of France) moodlighting was fitted on the 777.

We're nearlyyyy there !!!

Obviously there's only water to see at the moment out of the window.

The crew handed out the second "meal", which is given in a small bag.

It contains: a fruit tartar, orange juice, yoghurt, butter, bread, cheese and a warm tomato-goat cheese sandwich.
Such a shame Air France serves this on an 11 hour flight!! This would be fine on a New York to Paris red eye but I find this way to small on such a long flight.

Here's la Réunion!

This new road is called "Nouvelle Route du Littoral" and was built to replace the older coast road which ran at the foot of the cliff and was exposed to rockfalls. It's likely the most expensive road of the world and cost 1,6bn€.

Saint-Denis, the capital city of la Réunion.

Touchdown at 10h54.

An Air Austral 777-300ER is being pushed back as we get into the ramp.

Air Austral has quite an interesting fleet with 3 777-300ER, 2 787-8 and 3 A220-300.
We reach our parking spot at 10:58 local time, 2 minutes ahead of scheduled and we're now 3 hours ahead of Paris. 

Bienvenue à la Réunion!

Last pic of our ride.

A few flights from Paris are due today as well as many flights from Mauritius.

We did not wait long for our bags to arrive and mine came out first on the belt! Nicely done RUN!

Now's the time to pick up our rental and enjoy a week in the humidity of this island !

Thanks for reading!
The outbound flight will also published soon along with another trip I did recently :)
Jules