Review of Air France flight from Paris to Birmingham in Economy

Introduction

Given the type of operations our company does, I did not expect to be back to work so shortly after my trainings last week. However when I received my rooster for the following month, I was quite surprised to be scheduled for the first day of 2025. Quickly checking up as those days were usually off in our company, the person responsible for the schedule, told me that the salesman wanted at least one crew available for the 2nd of January 2025 and I was the unlucky one to be chosen…..

While Amsterdam does offer plenty of direct flights to Birmingham with EasyJet and KLM, I kindly asked operations to book me on the following flight via Paris to Birmingham as I would gain more points and status with Flying Blue for a similar price that EasyJet was asking incl. luggage (around 260 EUR). KLM's direct flights to Birmingham were quite expensive with the cheapest fare being 620 EUR. While the status and points were definitely a plus, this flight also meant that I would be trying out KLM's A321 product for the very first time and use Charles de Gaulle for the very first time for a non-schengen destination.

Transfer from 2F to 2E in Paris

Arriving from Amsterdam about ten minutes ago, it was now time for me to find my way to Terminal 2E as my flight to Birmingham was leaving from there. It is in the same building though, but quite a distant walk to be fair.

Luckily enough we had one of the K-gates at Terminal 2E, which is a bit closer to walk than the L-gates I believe, though a verification was done by staff to avoid people walking into a wrong direction.

Not a lot of people connecting today.

Not a lot of people meant also that passport control was quite deserted, however the annoying part was that despite having a fast track and a normal line, neither did have any use as both of them merged into the same line letting fast track passengers just wait as long as the normal line, though not a massive issue with just four people in line.

After completing my walk to Terminal 2E, we are now dropped in the main area where one would also end up if passing security control by landside. Definitely a more pleasant area to end up if compared to Terminal 2F.

Given that our gate for today's departure would be K34, it meant that we had to turn left through the xmas corridor?

Compared to 2F, the design is somewhat similar for 2E minus the materials they used. It does offer plenty of seating, though still not enough for the amount of flights and offers a few shops and eateries. The biggest minus point for this pier is that the lavatories are quite a distant walk if you are at one of the aft gates. It's also not the most friendly one for those who are disabled as the closest male lavatory had some steps to get to it. Other than that, it does the job and does have a nice design, though a bit on the warm side I must admit and it doesn't really give you the best views of the aircraft, but that's quite hard at Paris in general.

Boarding & Bound for Birmingham

The photo below is probably the best photo I could get from our aircraft that was going to bring us over to Birmingham.

F-HEPE is a 14.8 year old Airbus A320 that was newly delivered to Air France in May 2010 and carries the name ''Valence'', a city that is located south of Lyon, North of Avignon and West of Grenoble. This specific Airbus A320 is powered by two CFMI International CFM56 engines and is configured in Air France's oldest A320 lay-out of 174 seats. (Euro J & Y).

Boarding was called about 20 minutes prior to our scheduled boarding time as the aircraft was quite early on ground from it's previous flight out of Tunis, though border control was verifying each passport and their eligibility to enter the UK.

Once on board we were greeted by all flight attendants we passed by and they seemed quite cheery and friendly. Probably the new year's resolution, right?

The cabin itself is nothing special and similar to most A320s you can find flying around in the skies and just holds a table with a cupholder and a hook on the right to hand your jacket.

Legroom, while not spectacular, is still decent.

An impression of the cabin itself while boarding was still in progress and went quite slow in fact. Definitely a contender of one of the slowest boarding progress I've witnessed on an Airbus A320.

The most important feature is the window with a neighbouring A320 of Air France preparing for it's flight.

While boarding took about 45 minutes to complete on it's own, we finally pushed back for our destination only three minutes past our scheduled boarding time.

And about 15 minutes later, we were rolling for our departure in a westerly direction to cross the pond.

Only to disappear in clouds shortly after.

Once at safe altitude, the flight attendants appeared in the cabin to serve us our complimentary snack and drink.

The table was clean on today's flight!

On the snack / meal, no option was given and it was either to have it or not to have it. The snack itself was a ''Mediterranean bread with a spread of Marinated Vegetables'' and I must admit that I was not a huge fan of it as it was quite dry, tasteless and felt like eating a brick. 

While Air France doesn't really show it when carrying the cart, I kindly asked for a beer and was served a small can of Kronenbourg 1664.

The aircraft was equiped with Wifi and had roughly the same prices as the KLM flight to Paris with messaging being free, surfing being around 7 euro and streaming about 18 euro. I didn't really bother about the paid options as the prices were steep if calculating for an hour flight and messaging was working just fine. (sorry about the last photo, had to use the gallery to avoid using three portrait photos in a row).

By the time I just finished my drink and snack, the flight attendants came by to clean up the cabin as we were already in approach to Birmingham and would be landing within 20 minutes from now.

Touchdown at Runway 33 ended up fairly smooth and about 11 minutes ahead of schedule resulting us to be on stand about three minutes prior to our scheduled arrival time next to this Boeing 737 of TUI.

While the walk to immigration isn't particularly long, it felt like ages as I had to visit a lavatory rather sooner than later and the first one that you came across was just near immigration.

In the end immigration took no more than a minute to clear with almost nobody waiting in line. Luggage was suppose to be on Belt 4 and was shared with the TUI we saw earlier parked next to us, yet our luggage did arrive sooner than theirs (while they arrived like 10 min ahead of us) and quickly collected my bag to move to Birmingham's train station by monorail to catch the first shuttle bus to my hotel.

Thanks for stopping by!