Review of Air France flight Paris → Firenze in Economy

Good day avgeeks, today I am travelling from Paris CDG to a rainy Florence Peretola Airport in Italy. The only way to reach CDG airport by public transports is to buy a RER B ticket. You have a train departing every 5 to 10 minutes and it takes around 30 minutes to reach the airport. I am flying Air France's A319 on this trip.

boarding pass

Information about recommended arrival time at the airport as well as boarding gate are displayed on your virtual boarding pass.

reach cdg airport

From Paris centre you can take RER B from Gare du Nord to reach CDG airport. The train stops at two stations: Terminal 1-3 and Terminal 2, so check on your boarding pass in order to know which stop is the right for you.

Here's a view of the airport map.

Arriving at cdg airport

On Saturdays it can be possible that RER B is not running so make sure you have another solution to reach the airport in this case. 

As soon as you arrive at CDG airport with RER, you have a huge destinations display at the Terminal 2 in which you can spot any destination in the world.

Here's a KLM B737-800 which will be soon be off to Amsterdam.

waiting area

As I always try to arrive sooner at the airport, I had some spare time to buy something to eat and waiting in front of our assigned gate for this flight. At CDG Terminal 2, there are several bars and restaurants where you can grab something to eat or drink although this area is very crowded at some times. Our gate door was F35.

boarding

We had some delay as the aircraft was arriving from Stockholm and we boarded around 20:50. The aircraft of the day was F-GRHR A319.

Air France
Airbus A319-111
Age: 22 years (delivered in January 2001)
Engines: 2x CFMI

Once onboard, I went to my window seat in 11F (even though there was not much to see as it is a night flight and lights reflected on the window glass). But anyway, here's a view from the seat. Just next to the Boeing B737-800 of KLM and an Air France A321 just starting to taxi.

I think the seat spacing is very good for a 1 hour and 30 minutes flight in Economy class and there's also enough space to place your bag. I also had an empty seat just next to me.

takeoff and inflight

As I told, there was not much to see during takeoff and climb as it was dark and the sky was cloudy.

Service onboard started around 20/25 minutes right after departure. A sandwich and a beverage were offered by a nice crew. On this kind of short-haul flight, you are often given a choice between two sandwiches (this time was chicken or veggie) and several beverages (white wine, water, coca-cola, coffee, etc.). I went for the veggie choice and a coffee with was served with a glass of water.

descent and landing

We started the descent procedure around 35 minutes before landing. As there was very bad weather over Tuscany and especially in Florence (which has a very short runway for commercial aviation operations), pilots advised us that we might be forced to divert to another airport such as Bologna BLQ or Pisa PSA. As soon as lights were on, we could see the bad weather over the area.

Florence Peretola Airport has only one runway (05 - 23) which is 1560 metres long but faces Monte Morello mountain from one side and an industrial area with a motorway on the other. So, the airport makes it challenging for the pilots to land the aircraft, especially in non-standard conditions like wet runway or strong wind gusts.

Once under the clouds, we could start seeing the lights of the city. 

So here's our complete flight route with an arrival in Florence FLR just slightly after scheduled arrival time (at 23:09).