Air France has two lounges in terminal 2F at Roissy, one for each “branch” of the terminal, while waiting for the opening of a single, larger lounge between the two in the next few years.
So today we are going to see the lounge of the Terminal 2F2 on the occasion of a trip to Lisbon.
Location of the lounge
Many will tell you that it is at the tip of the Terminal 2F2…but you will not find any sign indicating this terminal 2F2.
It is more accurate to say that it is located in the part of the terminal that hosts gates 41 to 56, in the basement, at gate F49. If you are departing from gates 21 to 36 another lounge awaits you in the same location in the other part of the terminal.
It is easy to say that you can reach any door in less than 5 minutes, so its location is excellent.
Once in the terminal, just follow the instructions.
You go down to the level of the food court that you cross from end to end.
And at the end you arrive at the lounge.
Who has access to the lounge?
The access criteria are classic for an Air France lounge.
The lounge welcomes: gold and platinum members of the Air France flying blue frequent flyer program, their equivalents on the frequent flyer programs of other skyteam member airlines flying from the terminal on a skyteam airline, as well as all passengers flying in business or connecting from a first class flight.
Lounge layout
At the entrance of the lounge you have two possibilities: go through a kiosk to validate your eligibility or go through the reception. The eagerness to send you to the kiosks while the person sitting behind the counter does everything to avoid seeing you determines your choice.
The lounge is spread over two more or less identical floors.
First of all, the buffet area which we will talk about later.
Then small spaces where armchairs are lined up.
Then another area with drinks and tables.
This lounge was renovated a few years ago and is much nicer than before. A real success.
Another good choice: separating the lounge into many small spaces increases the feeling of “privacy” and avoids the effect of a station hall.
On the other hand, the lounge is much too small for the number of passengers it receives at peak times. This time I arrived at 2pm and there was no seat available either upstairs or downstairs and this is an unfortunately too recurrent experience in the Air France lounges of 2F.
I applaud the genius who designed this lounge: a spiral staircase between the two floors, without an elevator, is borderline malpractice! As if you can’ t imagine that many of its users might have a suitcase!
After a few minutes I will end up catching a table that was free next to the buffet…even though I had no intention to eat. So I took the place of people who probably wanted to eat more than I did. Too bad.
Another common complaint in Air France lounges: there is no working space, as if they think that the lounge only welcomes people who want to eat and not people who need to sit down with a computer or even make a phone call.
Food
The buffet is quite limited and moreover restocked in a very random way and this visit did not depart from the rule.
A gentleman asks a staff member who was clearing “do you have any chips”. She turns to her colleague “we did not take out the chips???”. It’s promising.
More than half an hour later the buffet is finally restocked.
Everyone will jump on it like starving people….and it will remain almost empty until I leave.
Level drinks the choice of soft is “normal” but they do not hurry either to refill.
There is wine but little choice and again the bottles are emptied faster than they are replaced as the empty bucket shows.
The choice of spirits is decent.
In the end, the offer was not only limited, weak in quantity and quality, with little variety and no hot dish, but also a service provider that was not managed at all and that left the buffet abandoned and only refilled it when the customers ended up complaining (an experience that I have had many times).
Toilets, showers…
Each floor has toilets, the first floor has showers.
Nothing to complain about: it’s clean, it smells good and it’s cleaned regularly.
Atmosphere and experience
I won’t discuss again the fact that the lounge was overcrowded and therefore noisy, nor the state of the buffet.
While it seems to me that the tendency is to have lounges “without announcements” to preserve the tranquility of passengers, here we had microphone announcement for each flight at departure, unbearable.
The staff
A distinction must be made between two things: Air France staff and the staff of the business to which Air France entrusts the operation of the lounge and the buffet.
On the Air France side: invisible. They do everything to not see you when you arrive and when I left there were 5 of them chatting together behind the reception counter and none of them bothered to say goodbye. On this side we note a real degradation of the service since the installation of the electronic terminals with staff who hide and avoid the customer.
The staff of the provider: recurrent remark at each of my visits: the buffet is left to abandon without being supplied for too long periods. The same goes for the empty wine bottles that accumulate. The offer itself is already minimalist, if on top of that it is not served there is a real problem.
Bottom line
The lounge is undeniably pretty and quite convenient. There is a problem of size but Air France is not responsible for the design of the terminal and the matter should be settled in a few years with the construction of a single lounge in 2F.
On the other hand, the catering part of the restaurant is on the verge of indigence and, moreover, is poorly served. As for the Air France staff, they give the impression of not wanting to see the customers.
When you have visited the Lufthansa lounges in Frankfurt in the past few weeks, or even the Lufthansa lounge in Terminal 1 at Roissy, which is far from being one of the best lounges of the German airline, you can tell that this lounge urgently needs to be brought up to par with the competition.
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