Air France Economy Class Review Paris (CDG) to Bangkok, Thailand (BKK), Asia – AF 166
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This would be my final flight as part of the mistake fare that I booked last June.
I had a connecting flight from Prague (PRG) to Paris (CDG) that operated perfectly on time and got me into Paris on another dreary day. My flight to Bangkok soon showed up with a delay of 15 minutes on the board - most likely because of other connecting passengers who had had a late inbound flight.
Terminal 2E is a bit barren - it only has an Air France lounge (no Priority Pass access) and just two food stalls to speak of. Interestingly, the seating areas have power outlets, but 9 out of 10 do not work! So it takes some trial and error in finding one. The WiFi is fast, though - the Boingo login that comes with the American Express Platinum gives you unlimited free WiFi.
So it isn't such a bad place at all.
People lined up through half the terminal for boarding and you could see this flight getting really crowded. As it turned out, this 777 would only have one empty seat in economy.
To make matters worse, it is configured in 10-abreast, which makes it really narrow. You can do 10-abreast in an A380, but in a 777?
The two aisles were tiny (even for skinny people like me) and most people had trouble just getting through them. Since this flight was mostly a daytime flight, people moved up and down through the cabin constantly (there was basically no turbulence the whole flight) and continually bumped into my shoulder (yes, I hada wonderful aisle seat).
There was plenty of food served (a dinner and a breakfast) - way too much food, in fact - and the quality wasn't great; it was worse than on my Air France economy flight from the US, but edible.
Intriguingly at dinner, on each tray, without asking, there wasa small bottle of red wine and a port wine for everyone. That must be a French thing :)
This being a predominantly French passenger list, people kept talking constantly well into the night. I'm not sure I have ever been on a flight where so many people would not
I was tired and wanted to sleep, but the consistent multitude of voices made that really hard.
We got into Bangkok with a 30-minute delay;we could not make up the lost time, but somehow added to our delay getting to our destination.
I've never had to wait at immigration in Bangkok before now, but this time several other planes must have just landed as immigration took almost one hour.
In conclusion, this was easily the worst flight from the list of long-haul economy flights I've endured recently. It was too crowded (10-abreast in a 777 is way too much), the other passengers were too annoying, the food was just about agreeable and the service was just about OK. This was a flight you'd want to forget quickly...
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