Review of easyJet flight Toulouse → Paris in Economy

Welcome on board this new report, first flight for me since the beginning of the covid-19 crisis. After 6 months on ground, I'm pretty excited to fly and travel again even if it's a short & random flight!

introduction

Like every passengers the covid outbreak cut my wings and most of my travel plans.
For this trip a short flight on the British low-cost carrier to reach the french capital, initially schedule in April this week-end in my girlfriend's family was disrupted due to the french territory lock-down last spring. Easyjet has canceled the flight in April and offer the opportunity for all the passenger to change their flight for free. We choose to postpone it on early September. We still suffered of a departure time change (3 hours early) notified one month before the flight.

The routing as performed: 

The line between Paris and Toulouse is very famous and it's one of the busiest in Europe. There is two majors actors on the market Air France and Easyjet, both of them operate flights from Paris CDG and Paris Orly with most of the traffic on Orly. This summer Easyjet has operated 1 daily flight to CDG instead of 2 daily's. For Air France the schedule was 4 operated instead of 5…

This winter there is 4 daily flights on CDG operated by Air France and just 1 weekly ! by the orange low cost carrier.
I've already write a report on this line with Easyjet in January 2019, it was on board an A320neo. Now the flight is operated by Easyjet Austrian subsidiary on A320 ceo.

Back to Blagnac airport … finally!

After 6 months without going to Toulouse airport we get back to our usual path to the airport via the tram, not really quick but really cheap with ticket price at 1,60€ for 1 hour on the public transport system. A quicker bus is available for 5€ but on the busy traffic hours he's submit to traffic jam.

For a Friday evening it's not really busy in front of the terminal doors, with just few taxi's waiting for customers. Usually this place is crowded with passengers and relatives…

Inside it's even worse with just few passengers and registration counters opened.

You can easily understand why when you have a look on the FIDS, with less than half of the flights operated tonight. And it's currently not improving with the cancellation of all the Ryanair flights for the winter season and the closure of Easyjet base as well (4x A320).

With such a low passenger number, security controls are completed quickly with friendly operators. After the control area you can still buy a half liter water bottle for just 1€, it's a self service stand.

Like many modern airport you should cross the duty free shop before reaching the gates, There is also a small mall with few shops, due to the lack of passengers most of them are temporally closed.

Our boarding took place on the C hall, gate 34. We are 45 minutes before the estimated time of departure and the boarding as already started. It' a boarding area by area. There is a good respect of barrier gesture by most of the passengers. With this new way of boarding, the process is longer but passenger don't spend time too close to each over.

Boarding pass on the easyjet App

On board easyjet A320

It' time for me and my girlfriend to get on board, our bird tonight is OE-INQ a less than 5 year old Airbus A320. He spend all is career with the orange low-cost airline starting with a British registration and now with an Austrian one.

As you can see our aircraft is wearing a special livery celebrating the Easyjet 20 years of service. A good addition to my flightlog for an avgeek like me ^^.

If you look on detail the sticker is composed of passengers pics taken during there holidays. A nice idea.

We are getting on board by the rear stairs, we are welcomed on board by one friendly cabin crew. We are getting to our seats on row 23. The cabine is the usual one on Easyjet A320 fleet, with the Recaro SL 3510 seats. They are pretty slim but more comfortable than the seat that you can find on older A319.

Pitch is not so bad, but I'm not really tall.

Boarding is quickly completed, luckily the row 22 is unoccupied, and we're moving to it after requesting to our crew. In this move I get a window seat ! Barely no aircraft on the ramp on a Friday evening, what a depressing landscape.

However an Hop Crj-1000 will soon come from Lyon.

As we are starting to push back we can have a look on this big Airbus Beluga who's taxiing to the Airbus facility after a flight from Saint Nazaire Airbus plant.

We are release by the pusher 10 minutes before the scheduled departure time. No delays because of the traffic tonight.

The only aircraft that we saw during our way to runway 14L is this Air Dolomiti Embraer 195 who's flying to Munich for Lufthansa. It's the only flight of the day operated by the German airline on Toulouse airport. Before the pandemic there was 4 flights to FRA and 3 to MUC every day and most of them operated on Airbus A320… Now there is just one daily flight to Munich on a small Embraer.

We are lining on runway, on the other side of the airport, the Airbus factory with some aircraft waiting their delivery like this Delta A330neo and this British Airways A350-1000. Here also there was a big cutoff on production rates…

After this worrying aviation market preview, let's try to forget it and get threw the air once again. Engines are set to take off thrust, what a pleasure to hear our two CFM 56 engines roaring ! Here we go !

Friday evening, not a surprise to see the Airbus factory car-park mostly empty.

After gaining a higher altitude we are starting a U turn to take a north heading. Picture isn't too good as I facing the sun at this moment but you can recognize Toulouse Francazal airfield, a former military base now used for aircraft maintenance and storage.

This heading change offers opportunity to have a great view on Toulouse city, here the South of the urban area and the Garonne river.

We are flying over the city by the west, under the wing you can guess the Blagnac airfield where our flight has started.

Another small turn, with a nice sun shining light on the historical center.

See you in few days Toulouse !

We are slowly climbing up to our cruise altitude.

As usual for Easyjet it's a buy on board service, my girlfriend will buy an appetizer set for 5€.

We flew other Brive-la-Gaillarde and is airport.

On board the cabin it's quiet and face mask are correctly worn by almost all the passengers. The load factor is around 80% not so bad, but not really good if you consider that it's friday evening. And usually flight were overbooked…

I can literally said that it was a flight without a cloud ! At this time we were around Orléans.

Branded sharklet

Flightradar24 as tracked our flight, as you can see cruise altitude was 36000ft.

Our descent was already started when we are turning around Chartres in order to take a heading to the East.

Sun shining lights are in accordance with easyjet livery !

We are approaching Paris with the familiar shape of Versailles Palace "grand canal" ! What an original view on this Unesco world heritage monument.

This nice view was just a teasing for the wonderful Paris crossing that we have performed few minutes later !

On the right the Eiffel tower, on the middle "les Invalides" next to Seine river.

On this large view you can guess the isle of "La Cité" and isle "Saint Louis" there is also Bastille square.

After this incredible flyover of the French capital it's time for us to get to Charles de Gaulle airport.

Spoiler were used to get to the ground faster.

Another U turn near Meaux to be on East approach axis, you can see the Marnes river.

On final for South runways of CDG.

Landing at Paris cdg airport

And it will be a landing on the 26L on the shining sun.

We are quietly escaping the runway (not to many airplane behind us tonight). and we don't stop before crossing runway 26R during taxi.

On the way to our parking stand we can have a look on this Montenegro Airlines Embraer 195 who comes from Podgorica.

Or this Air Serbia A319 starting is journey to Belgrade

We are in contact tonight, our neighbor is an Air Austral Boeing 787-8 who's coming from Mayotte another French overseas island near Madagascar.

The debarkation process will take time, as it's performed row by row to respect social distancing. This new way of flying is well executed by crew and passengers, good point. As you can we only use 1L door with the jet bridge to get out our A320.

Another usual aspect of this flight is the terminal used, usually Easyjet operates from terminal 2D but tonight most of the flight use terminal 2C instead. As some other flight are coming from outside Schengen destination we quickly pass threw an ID control. Not a common thing for a domestic flight.

There is just a short walk to get to the luggage delivery belts and then ground side, major difficulty is to find an opened door to get outside the terminal !

After a chaotic run in the middle of the traffic parked near the terminal due to road work in front of the terminal. We finally reach my girlfriend father and is car. who's driving us home for a short week-end with the family.

Here's the end of the report hope you enjoyed it, see you soon for more flight experience review !