Review of Air France flight New York → Paris in Economy

Hi,

Check in at Air France's counters in JFK Terminal 1 took quite a while and I had to wait ca. 20 minutes in queue this evening. 

However security was quite quick and soon I found myself airside at the rather cramped and not too attractive Terminal 1. I spotted a nice Royal Air Maroc 787 on the way to my guide.

Boarding lanes at my gate have already been set up to allow boarding by groups in ca. 30 minutes.

All of this done for this nice looking Airbus 380 whale.

On the next gate a nice looking Lufthansa 747-8 was getting ready for its overnight run to Frankfurt.

Boarding started ca. 15 minutes late but in quite an orderly manner by groups. Once I reached the aircraft door the cabin was already quite full which made it hard to take some nice cabin shots. A friendly cabin crew welcomed me and I passed the nice looking 'La Premiére' First Class cabin - it would be great to sit down here:

But no - I continue my way to my Economy aisle seat in row 38.

The cabin and the seats actually already show some age but still are nice and actually very comfortable for an Economy seat: The pitch is good, the seat offers a foot rest and the center armrests are in my opinion wider than on other planes I sat before. A small pillow and a blanket were waiting at each seat - both of mediocre size and quality.

Also on each seat a very nice and comfortable headset was waiting - the package also included eye masks but no socks.

I really liked the design of the seat that provides a small storage area for e.g. your glasses during sleep. A very helpful detail.
The screen however was very old fashioned with a very bad resolution, old fashioned menu structure and also quite a limited movie selection. 

My views from the aisle seat would be limited to the camera on this night flight.

A flight time of short 6 hours 10 minutes was announced due to strong tail winds and we started taxing to our runway. This took for ages at a very busy JFK and we finally took off ca. 50 minutes after leaving our parking position.

Ca. 20 minutes after take off the cabin was put to some kind of mood light ambience which remained like this during the whole dinner service to elp passengers to rest and maybe sleep without ordering a meal.

Cabin crew passed around distributing packaged refreshing towels and menus.

It was very nice to see Air France offering printed menus on such a rather short night flight.

Quite soon trolley appeared and I was served my dinner choice of chicken. This came with a cold bread roll. I had some wine and a Ginger Ale with it to drink, The meal tasted totally fine considering it was an Economy meal.

Clearing away the trash ca. 25 minutes later cabin crew proactively offered hot drinks and digestifs to finish. All in all the cabin crew was very friendly throughout the flight and smiling a lot. However I always spoke to them in French. To my experience Air France crews often seam to be more friendly and chatty in French compared to English.

The flight passed by rather quickly although I could not really find some sleep.
Ca. 1,5 hours before landing we reached Ireland where cabin lights were turned on and a small and very simple breakfast was served. However it did the job on such a short night flight and I had some nice hot chocolate with it - a nice feature that Air France offers this in addition to coffee and tea. 

We landed on time and parked at M gates satellite building. After disembarkation I got a final shot of our huge jet and another Air France longhaul 777 passed closeby.

Thanks for reading,
FlyAlex