#23 out of 94 Airlines A minimum of 10 flight-reports within the past two years is required to appear in the rankings.
6118 reviews
A visual of this entire journey from Barcelona to San Francisco via Paris:
Total distance flown will be 6,116 mi / 9,843 km
Welcome to another trip report!
This report will be continuation of my journey to San Francisco from CDG where my journey started initially in Barcelona (you can check it out here). This was an exciting trip and much awaited trip as it was be my first time flying long-haul on AF onboard their B777-300ER's. Today's flight starts off me connecting here in CDG where I had about 1h and 45m connection time which in retrospect was not a good idea as I learned the hard way ?. If I can give anyone advice if you have a connection here in CDG is to give yourself a solid 2 to 2.5h in between your flights to give yourself a comfortable journey and not have to run and stress about changing terminals, especially if your connecting to an onward international flight like I was.
After disembarking my flight, I followed the crowd and went looking for a flight information board.
After finding the departures board I looked for my flight which will be departing out of gate M47.
Here's where the chaos happened. We had to queue for a bus to switch terminals which took a good 30 minutes. Afterwards we had to queue again for another 25 minutes or so to get through immigration and get an exit stamp before reaching our gate. All in all it took a good 1h and 10 minutes and that's with me speed walking through the place ?.
I did at least enjoy the ramp views when taking the bus.
AF 777-200LR
DL A330-300
After a 10 minute ride we made it to our departure terminal.
I clearly underestimated CDG's size and connection time needed when transiting here. At least I know for next time.
I still had a few minutes before boarding so I decided to do a bit of plane spotting.
Here's a DL A330-300 departing for DTW.
Another DL A330-300 arriving from New York JFK.
And here's my bird that will take me across the pond to SFO today. Interesting thing happened to me right after taking this pic of my aircraft. I was approached by an AF agent, and she told me to immediately erase my picture of the aircraft as it was illegal. After politely asking why she told me 'taking pictures of aircraft will give ideas terrorists and that's why it's illegal'. She didn't just tell me to stop taking pictures, oh no, she wanted to visually see me erase my photos. I obviously retrieved my fotos later from my deleted folder (thank god). But this was an absolute strange experience that I've never encountered before or heard of in all my travels. Has this happened to anyone else especially in CDG? I didn't want to argue with her as I didn't want to be arrested and be left in Paris ?.
Some information about my plane:
Flight number: AF 84
Aircraft: Boeing B777-328(ER)
Registration: F-GSQH
Delivered: January 14, 2005
Age: 18 years
Boarding began on time and large queue began forming with AF staff asking the normal security questions one by one before boarding the flight.
A friendly FA greeted me at the door, looked at my boarding pass and guided me to cross the galley to the next aisle over.
Here's the very elegant business class cabin.
Followed by premium economy.
And lastly economy class.
My seat for the next 11 hours.
A view of the cabin before the main heard of people take their seats.
At each seat there was a pillow, blanket and a headset provided.
A good size PTV which I was excited to use and explore the entertainment options later during the flight.
The only slight disappointment was the legroom which feels a bit tight but not uncomfortable by any means. According to aerolopa these seats offer 31" pitch and 17.2" width.
Though the cabin design is sleek and modern, I'm not a huge fan of the tight 3-4-3 abreast configuration here in economy class. Which added to the tightness and less personal space.
The view from my window with the cargo door still open.
Important to note that each seat offers individual usb port and 2 universal power ports per 3 seats.
Boarding was complete and to my luck I had the middle seat vacant which was great as this will make my flight more comfortable. Todays flight loads looked at around 85%.
We pushed back 10 minutes behind schedule and shortly after the safety demonstration video began playing.
DL A330-900Neo bound for SLC.
EVA Air B777-300ER departing shortly for TPE.
Lining up on the runway for takeoff.
Until next time Paris!
We soon broke through the dense layer of clouds over France.
Crossing the English Channel.
Now flying over the coastal town of Dover.
The tray table was a standard size and extendable.
Shortly after takeoff the FA's passed out these 'covid' amenity kits. Which included a mask and wipes.
Here's also a look at the headsets provided. They weren't the best of quality, my personal favorite are the ones Delta provides.
The lunch service started about an hour into flight while flying over northern Ireland.
Choices were pasta or chicken, I went with the pasta. The meal tray also included a side of cous cous salad, bread roll (not warmed), cheese with crackers, bottle of water and lastly a chocolate brownie of sorts as dessert. And the drink cart quickly followed next which I went for a red wine.
The pasta dish was very good and cooked perfectly.
The dessert, though small, was very delicious.
The meal overall was very delicious!
Shortly after the trays were collected, the FA's came by once again with the drink cart and I went for a coffee.
Approaching over Greenland, unfortunately we couldn't see much due to the cloud cover.
For most of the flight the cabin was kept dark for other passengers to get some sleep.
AF has an extensive amount of movies and tv shows to choose from. My favorite part was of course the interactive map which I kept on my screen for most of the flight.
About 6 hours into flight I decided to take a stretch and checkout the loo. It was what you'd expect but it was surprisingly clean went I went in.
On my way out of the loo I passed by the galley to check out what snacks they had available. I found the crew congregated there chatting away and they seemed to be a little bothered when I went 'in their space' to get a snack from a box there.
Although there wasn't an official mid-flight service performed by the crew, I still went to the galley and helped myself to what they had to offer. There were sandwiches, yogurts, cheese and crackers. I went for a yogurt and a sandwich as my mid-flight snack.
The yogurt was fine but the sandwich was very underwhelming and had almost no filling and mostly bread.
Flying over northern Canada.
I was sitting so far aft that I was able to see the contrails which were very cool.
About 2 hours before arrival the pre-arrival service commenced. AF has a unique looking 'goodie bag' containing all kinds of snacks along with a warm sandwich.
A warmed up sandwich.
Here are the contents in the bag, excluding the warm sandwich.
This sandwich (although warmed) also lacked filling and was not enjoyable.
Minutes later the FA's came by with the drinks cart, I went for a coke.
Flying over Boise, Idaho.
Mt. Shasta, elevation: 14,179ft / 4,332m
Welcome to San Francisco!
Spotted a rare AS 737-900 without winglets.
Delta B757-200 departing for Boston.
Several AA jets.
Despite leaving Paris 30 minutes late, we arrived 35 minutes ahead of schedule.
A look at the lavish Business class cabin.
This concludes the journey and trip report. Thanks for reading!
This was a good flight on AF. Connecting in CDG was a nightmare however AF has nothing to do with the efficiency of the airport. I would highly recommend to anyone connecting here to give yourself a good 2-3 hours to make your connection less stressful. The AF agents before boarding were not the friendliest and did not show affection, especially the altercation with that AF agent that came up on me very aggressively for taking 'illegal' photos of my plane didn't set a good tone for my flight. However once onboard it was different in terms of comfort and food provided. The two meal services were great and had very good portion sizes, however, the lack of a mid-flight service was a huge let down (especially for an 11 hour flight at this one) and the FA's hid in the galleys and crew rest areas for the 7 hours in between the services. There were self serve mid flight snacks in the back galley but they lacked variety. Lastly the FA's on this flight weren't the best nor were they the worst, it just seemed that they didn't want to be there. Maybe because they didn't want to work economy class, who knows. Quite the contrast comparing to the FA's on my previous short flight between BCN and CDG which were great. The highlight of the flight would definitely be the fantastic PTV's and amazing interactive map which was my main form of entertainment on the flight.
Les contributeurs de Flight-Report ont posté 36 avis concernant 2 compagnies sur la ligne Paris (CDG) → San Francisco (SFO).
La compagnie qui obtient la meilleure moyenne est Air France avec 7.5/10.
La durée moyenne des vols est de 11 heures et 35 minutes.
More information
4 Comments
A rather good flight on AF, although the product didn't really change since Covid-19.
Really bad luck to go from Terminal 2F to Terminal 2E Gates M. Personnally, if I have to transit, I plan 2h30 and up to 4 hours regardless the transit airport, especially in case of delay with the inbound flight.
As for that "illegal" part, there are rules about it indeed, but it's very complicated to apply. I also heard that even for spotting aircrafts nearby, spotters must make a request to the authorities to get a permit, which doesn't always excuse a fine...
Have safe flights. ;)
Thanks for sharing!
Login to post a comment.