Review of Air France flight Paris → New York in Economy

background

This flight was my second to last flight on my way home from my trip to Europe this summer. My routing looked like this: MSY-JFK, JFK-TXL, VIE-CDG, CDG-JFK, JFK-MSY. My flights were on Delta and Air France. However, this will be the last report of this series because the last flight did not depart till 3 A.M. and I was too tired to report on it.


Prior to this flight, I had just gotten off my Air France flight from Vienna that arrived at 2F. My connection time was 2 hours which I now know is cutting it close when transferring between the 2 terminals as Customs was very crowded and caused me to feel as if I was not going to make the flight. The transfer did take long but since the A380 is such a large plane, boarding was only beginning once I reached the gate. The line was way past the gate. I was boarding in Zone 5 and rather ironically, I was on the plane before most of the Zone 4 passengers were on since their line was much longer.

There was a good bit of congestion in the jet bridge which was not surprising but it was not too long of a wait. Fortunately, I was not selected for a random security check at boarding.

on the aircraft

I had read multiple reviews about the economy seats on this plane so I knew what to expect. When you first walk in the plane, you really notice how big the aircraft is. My seat was 33L, right by the wing. The IFE was definitely outdated but my last long haul flight was on a Delta 767-400 and mine didn’t even work so I was pleased. I read that users often have to use the remote because the screen isn’t sensitive, but I thought my screen was fairly good and I didn’t have to use the remote too much. The awkward space between the window seat and the window was not as much of a bother as I expected and is good for storage.  

At my seat was an amenity kit with many items.

We were told we would take off on runway 27L and our flight time would be 7 hours and 20 minutes. We finally pushed back at 2:10 P.M. 

I figured that the landing gear were right below my seat as during this time and landing, it was very loud down there. We taxied for a few minutes and then had a very long yet smooth takeoff at 2:27 P.M. A few minutes after takeoff, we encountered some rough turbulence.

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Towel service began about 10 minutes inflight and menus were passed out during this as well.

 Menu:

I am a picky eater so I didn’t plan on eating on this flight so I brought plenty of snacks for myself. Nevertheless, I still plan to pick a meal and see if it is good. I’ve heard great things about Air France’s food, even in economy, so I was eager to find out if this was true for myself.


Drink service began about 30 minutes in flight and I decided to get a ginger ale and they came with some poppy and pepper crackers.  

The meal was served about 90 minutes inflight. I wanted to order the pasta but they didn’t give me a choice when they got to me and just gave me chicken.

I tasted some of the food and it was good for economy, but nothing too special. 

One think that I enjoyed about the A380 was the mood lighting that was offered on the flight.

The IFE was honestly better than I expected. It had lots of different options available. I counted 150 movies alone available in English. Most of the movies available I had never really heard of but there were still some famous ones. There were also lots of fun games and an aircraft camera which was good. Since this was an older aircraft, and it would be retired in a few years, there was only a USB outlet and not an outlet which i disliked. I was also sad to see that I couldn’t go on the Internet because WiFi wasn’t offered.   

A380 Safety Card:

The final light snack service was served about an hour prior to arrival. The service came in a small bag and included a turkey and cucumber sandwich, some apples, and a vanilla yogurt drink along with a ginger ale. The sandwich was good and the apples tasted good too but some of them were browning a lot so you could tell they may be getting a little old. I did not try the yogurt drink.  

arrival

We finally prepared for our descent at 3:19 P.M. ET and touch downed early at 3:50 P.M. but we arrived a little bit too early so we had to wait. It was raining when we landed and I learned that there was actually lots of severe weather in the area so many flights were delayed including my final flight to New Orleans that was delayed 2 hours.  

Customs in JFK was actually very painless and quick. Since I was connecting onto a Delta flight I had to walk out of Terminal 1 and enter Terminal 2 and clear security once again which was annoying.