Hello and Good Morning from Zurich Airport.
Today, we'll be flying to Seoul vis Paris on AirFrance.
Air France and KLM are actually both my favourite european carriers but it has been quite a while since I've flown AF again, so I am really looking forward, especially to CDG which is my favourite airport in terms of architectural beauty.
Today's flight to CDG will be on F-HOZE, an A220-300.
Check In and Security
Check In took ages even though there were only two people in front of me because one complained that 50CHF was too expensive for an upgrade and the other one complained that the flight was full and he couldn't upgrade. Maybe use the economy check in then and don't block skypriority lane. For the future, I's also advise to either use online check in to upgrade or book it directly. Especially because he complained that he had a "right to upgrade". No, Sir. You don't.
Anyways, after dropping off my luggage myself I proceeded through security. Due to the new scanners, it went fairly quick.
Aspire Lounge A
Skyteam E+ grants you access to two different lounges in ZRH. Merhaba and Aspire, depending on your carrier. While Aspire is good, Merhaba is one of the worst lounges I've been to. I find it interesting, that AF and KL use different lounges, though both are part of the same group. KL uses Merhaba and AF Aspire. I only had two croissants and an orange juice in the lounge but used the time to charge my airpods, which I had forgotten to do at home.
The lounge itself is divided into two parts, i used the smaller one today.
Then it was already time to head to the gate, which will be A85, at the very end of the A concourse, so it's a walk across the airport first and then a long travellator ride.
I really like this little relaxing area behind the wooden wall, i wonder why it is mostly unoccupied.
Boarding
Boarding was chaotic. Normally in ZRH, they use egates for Y and the J and Elite Passengers use the manned scanner. Not so today, so everyone huddled over to the gates and bypassed the Economy passengers already queued up. One of my favourite moments always is when someone tried to cut the queue and the gate showed an error because it wasnt his boarding group yet.
Boarding started 5 minutes late because someone was getting deported so there was police onboard the flight and they had to get some documents first.
Cabin
I really love the Air France cabin because of the deep blue design, which I find calming. I also love the headrests which are adjustable and unfortunately is no longer common on intra european flights.
Legroom on the other end however was quite small. (I'm 180 as reference).
After takeoff I usually take my backpack between my legs so I can stretch them under the seat like this:
It looks simple but actually provided so much more comfort.
The seat itself is equipped with a USB-A and USB-C power outlet, a traytable, a mobile phone holder and a seperate cup holder.
Inflight
We were informed that we will be delayed due to a traffic regulation in CDG. Instead of 07:40, engine start is not planned to take place at 08:15. At 8:00 we were further delayed to 9:00 due to incoming storms in CDG. We finally pushed back at 8:41 with a 1-hour delay.
We took of from 28 at 8:57.
Meal service was a huge butter cookie and your choice of coffee, tea or orange juice and I chose the last one.
Now let's enjoy some views of the alps.
I didn't notice anything of the "severe thunderstorm" as we had no turbulence at all and paris had a clear blue sky.
We landed at 9:50 and had a 11 minute taxi to our gate, were we arrived 51 minutes delayed.
Now let's head for my connecting flight.
