Review of Air France flight Paris → Lisbon in Economy

Portugal is a common holiday destination for French people (they made up on quarter of the foreign visitors recorded at the ticket counters of various sites that we visited), but very unusual for me after a decade of vacations in the Far East.

The routing for getting there and back was the nadir of creativity:

AF1024 (CDG - LIS) : A319, seat 10A (you are here)
AF1225 (LIS - CDG) : A319, seat 10A (to be posted later)

This trip to the unknown started by a ride on the RER-B line, in a train which "of course" was an omnibus, as indicated on the line diagram, with a sign listing the terminal for each airline on the left.

The RER-B looked nicer once outside beyond North station, when there is a bright sunshine.

I had bad memories of the reliability of the RER-B and added a half hour margin at the expense of Mrs. Marathon’s sleep, but we had this time an uneventful trip to CDG, and the well-known FIDS of its train station.

I had not had time to find a better view on the FIDS before a staff approached and asked if I needed assistance. I did not, and she then went to an isolated passenger who obviously did not know what to do next, but this was Mrs. Marathon who knew by experience that going to an airport is a long test of patience while her husband accumulates the pictures needed to illustrate a future Flight Report.

The FIDS, with my flight identified with a method patented by PAT62.

An A318 seen on the way to Terminal 2F

When you go to CDG in the morning of the first Saturday in August, you understand the advantage of the Access #1, where we no longer have access.

For the small fry, which like sardines travels in early August in enormous schools before being packed in metal cans, the line to reach the luggage drop looked like this. Mrs. Marathon no longer regretted the lost half hour of sleep.

All the less that she was going to wait seated while I managed the problem (it was a fair deal; I often leave her with our hand luggage for plane-spotting reasons, so it was my turn to wait).
Obtaining the BPs was fast, because the machine for once recognized me immediately.

On the other hand, the waiting line was what it was: twenty minutes to reach this gate, supposed to mark the entrance to the luggage drop.

Another three minutes to get here

Exactly 30 minutes elapsed from my entering the line, which was less bad than what I feared at the sight of the human jam in the hall. Two self-serve luggage drop counters out of order out of twelve : it did not help.

The waiting line had worsened when I emerged at last.

Better be zen and happy in such circumstances, and it seemed to be the case of all passengers who were patiently waiting without any fuss.

The human traffic had been regulated upstream by the luggage drop, so there was little waiting at the security check.

Going down to the lower level where the toilets (and AF’s lounge) are located is actually a gain of time when your gate is at the far end of the jetty, because it takes very few full flights to make it crowded – a well-known design flaw of this terminal.

Some plane spotting (for once with the hand luggage, to let my wife go to the toilets) from the extremity of the jetty.

A KL 738 in front of an AF A321

An AF A319

Loading of the luggage in our A319, while an A321 passes behind

A DL 767 goes home

Arrival of a Cityjet Jumbolino

Air Malta A320 in a special livery

The courtesy newspaper stands had an ample supply

… enough for Mrs. Marathon to pick up nearly the same sample on the other side. I played it fair and put all duplicate copies back in the newspaper stands for other passengers.

Boarding started, with priority passengers first, who were few : on that day, this flight was obviously full of vacationing non-frequent flyers.

The staff at the gate asked my wife if she spoke French, and then an unintelligible question to which she answered "yes” : she had the experience of unintelligible questions in Chinese airports and knew that this was the answer least likely to generate trouble in a Chinese airport, and possibly in a French airport too.

Two or three passengers later, it was my turn, and the same staff who was obviously concerned by our linguistic skills asked if I spoke French, and then if I had a valid BP or something like that, to which, for my experience of airports which were more Chinese than French, I answered by a standard non-committal nod which allows the interlocutor to choose the answer he actually prefers.

F-GRHX was not young : she had entered revenue service on 26 June 2001, but like me, although I entered revenue service a long time before, the day of retirement was still very far away.

I joined my wife in the jet bridge which had windows …

… and once she had let me take the picture of another A319 at the next gate (Flight Reporters have priorities ^^), she told me about these strange questions at the gate and we realized we had had the same. That puzzled be, and since there was a slight jam just after the plane’s door, she asked the FA welcoming the passengers how a BP could be not valid. The FA was puzzled in turn, asked for our BPs and suddenly Eureka! The staff at the gate had asked if WE were valid, not our BPs, because we had seats on an exit row!

I had good reasons to believe that I was valid, but I was not convinced after this test to understand French, at least not that of a ground staff in CDG.

The last row of the business class (the main difference is the red antimacassar)

And our exit row seats, assigned automatically by AF.

Row 10 before it filled up

I usually avoid these seats due to this pictogram which prohibits keeping your hand luggage during take-off and landing, because I do not like parting from my laptop and my legs do not require much space, but AF had not offered me the choice, or even warned me that my dubious command of the French language could be a problem.

This provided an opportunity to have the standard information to passengers sitting in an exit row.

Veteran Flight Reporters know that the exit row has an increased seat pitch

Dix centimeters more than in other rows were much more than what I needed.

An interesting detail : the window shade is not lowered, but pushed up, because of the presence of the emergency exit handle just above the window.

Apart from that, it was a rather ordinary AF seat

Not fully: whereas the passengers in the other rows have a hook for hanging their vest,

… the passengers of Row 10 have a gizmo which makes it impossible to hang anything.

The upholstery was either aged or lacked cleaning, but their condition remained acceptable.

The safety card both sides

There is no Row 13 in AF planes

The explanation of this double yellow ring which must generate some drag,

… is there : they are used to hook the line guiding the passengers to the rear of the wing, in case of an evacuation through this emergency exit.

Before evacuating in emergency, you should have a demonstration, and there it is, with the kit placed on the table tray of the passenger in seat 10C.

Pushback

An imminent takeoff from Runway 26 (L or R, I did not note).

The plane would fly around Paris on the west side, which provided a view on the left on the Stade de France

The loop of the Seine River near Gennevilliers

The skyscrapers of La Défense business district

Montparnasse Tower(on the left) and the Eiffel Tower (on the right), and a number of other remarkable buildings, not always for their aesthetics.

The Eiffel Tower

Air-to-air shots are not to be taken for granted. This plane was much too far away.

The catering was a drink

And a choice of viennoiserie

My wife’s choice (salty)

And mine (sweet)

A glimpse at the AF in-flight magazine, whose vision of Madagascar in its July edition, outdated by only a few hours, was much more paradisiac than in the tourist bonuses posted on Flight Report.

I stopped at this page. The English version is OK, but whoever wrote “porcelaine de Kangxi” (porcelain of Kangxi) obviously did not know that Kangxi was not a place, but the name of one of China’s greatest emperors (1654 – 1722).

I have seen quite a lot of Kangxi porcelains in museums in Portugal, which traded a lot with China through its colony in Macau, like for instance these in the Museum of Ancient Arts in Lisbon.

At time of flying, I had taken off or landed in 37, i.e. over half of these 72 cities served by AF/KL and its Skyteam partners (I added Haikou later, see these reports to HAK and from HAK). How about you ?

First view of the Tagus

… and of Alverca air base, where there is an annex of the Portuguese Air Museum, located in Sintra Air Base.

This is the place where the Tagus reaches a wide inland bay, upstream from a narrow channel crossed by Lisbon’s great bridges.

Vasco de Gama Bridge

25 April Bridge

Lisbon Airport

The estuary of the Tagus

The plane was going to cross the Tagus twice to land on Runway 03. This screenshot from Flightradar24 (thanks) should clarify the trajectory during this descent.

First turn to the south east, providing a view on the Tagus with the 25 April Bridge in the background

Lisbon on the left and Caparica on the right

The São Lourenço do Bugio lighthouse, in the middle of the Tagus’ estuary

The left bank of the Tagus, facing the historic center of Lisbon.

The plane crossed the Tagus again and offered an ideal view on the Bélem Tower, one of the major tourist sights in Lisbon.

There it is seen from the ground ; a low dam has been added so that it remains surrounded with water at low tide despite the change in the course of the river caused by the earthquake in 1755.

The Jerónimos Monastery, a masterpiece of Manueline style. Apart from its famous cloister, here behind the Church Santa Maria, it also contains now the Navy Museum (on the left) and the Archeological Museum (center).

The same, from the ground

The Monument to the Discoveries

… that you cannot miss when visiting the aforementioned monuments.

The irreverent Lisbon inhabitants nicknamed "Não empurra!" (Don’t push!) this monument inaugurated in 1960, at the time of Salazar’s dictatorship .

Back to the main topic : the plane kept descending on the outlying neighborhood of LIS, which has been caught up by urbanization.

The green roof of the José Alvalade stadium, located at Campo Grande subway station, a few minutes from touchdown

Arrival in LIS, where there are of course many TAP aircraft

But there is also a TK aircraft

And KL

Portugal is the only country in Europe where you can see a TAAG aircraft (Angola), in LIS and OPO.

I took this picture at ETA + 9’: the plane was on time

Some more plane spotting in this rather plane spotting unfriendly airport, because most windows are covered with black dots.
CS-TFX, a Hi-Fly A340

In the distance, Terminal 2 which harbors the LCC ; note that Norwegian is there together with Easyjet (and Ryanair too)

The same, with less image distortion due to hot air from reactors.

It was a longish walk to reach the luggage delivery room

Twenty minutes from the final stop of the plane to the appearance of the first piece of luggage was rather slow, and we waited for a long time for ours.

Recovering our rental car took an even longer time, but this inefficiency of the car rental agencies (ours was not the worst, in this regard) was not due to the airport’s management : there was room at the counter for more staff, and they could have processed the customers much faster.

This is the end of this FR and the beginning of a small tourist bonus on Lisbon where we spent several days at the end of our vacation, after returning the rental car which was useless for visiting Lisbon. On the other hand, the car was convenient to visit friends in Sintra, and not the Air Museum (that would be for another time) :

.. but the extravagant Pena Palace ; the preceding picture was taken from its chemin de ronde

The same chemin de ronde provides a superb 180° landscape, in particular on this old Moorish fortress. See this Flight Report by NGO85 for spectacular pictures of this fortress (and for his entire tourist bonus).

Another must-see in Sintra : the National Palace, with its iconic kitchen chimneys

The center of the vault of the Armories Room

Between Sintra and Lisbon, there is the Queluz Palace, a sort of small Versailles Palace which was strangely empty of visitors when we went there in the afternoon after landing in LIS.

Let’s go back to Lisbon. The surroundings of the Jerónimos Monastery changed a lot since the mid-17th century.

View of the Monastery and the Bélem Square, paint on canvas by Filipe Lono, dated 1657, Museum of Ancient Arts
You could only see birds flying in the sky at that time.

Nowadays, apart from going to the plane spotting location located alongside the perimeter of the airport, west of Runway 3’s threshold , this is an interesting spot.

It is quite far from the runways, but with a good zoom and with good weather, you can have good surprises:

The Navy Museum, at the above end of the same convent, is probably not spontaneously visited by Flight Reporters. The museum of course focuses nearly on Portuguese ships only (this is quite a vast topic!), but there is a very small section on naval aviation. There are three seaplanes : a G-44, in operation from 1942 to 1952

A French-British built Schrek – F.B.A. , which entered operation in 1917


And the masterpiece of this retrospective of the Portuguese naval aviation : the beautifully restored Fairey III « Santa Cruz », which made the first crossing of the South Atlantic with two Portuguese pilots in June 1922. She is the sole survivor of the 964 planes of the British-built type.

If you want to save the cheap entry ticket and several hours of sea-related topics before reaching these planes at the far end of the museum, you can go to the Monument to the Discoveries. There is a monument to these two pilots, with a quite faithful steel sheet replica of the plane, but the real thing is much better.

It is somewhat like this piece of art seen close to the Tower of Bélem: it is neither a bird nor a Piaggio tuk-tuk.

The Piaggio tuk-tuks are everywhere in the historic center of Lisbon (and of other cities too), for good reason : they are cheap to buy and operate, fit anywhere, very maneuverable, provide a panoramic view to the passengers.

They are unfortunately quite noisy (I saw an electric one), and the city of Lisbon had to place specific signs prohibiting them in neighborhoods which are too narrow for vehicles other than those of the residents.

The Lisbon tuk-tuk is somewhat like Tram #28, here in front of the cathedral : even if you did not actually ride in one, you cannot have not seen one.

Lisbon is also famous for its miradoures, i.e. panoramic viewpoints which are accessible for free. The most famous ones are probably that of Santa Luzia

… and the even more spectacular one of Santa Justa, in the heart of the city

From below too, St George Castle looked great at sunset.

There is so much more to see in Lisbon that I prefer stop here this tourist bonus before I bore my readers. Thanks for your patience in reading me all the way to here !