Another very average medium-haul flight on Air France, which doesn’t reassure us about the quality of its medium-haul product…unless it’s the routes of the now-defunct Hop! that are being neglected?

For the record here is the air routing of this trip.

You’ll find a summary of the articles about this trip to Australia at the bottom of the page.

Check-in and ground course

I check-in online the day before and arrive at the airport about two hours before my flight.

I’ve never seen so many people in Landvetter, but it’s 48 hours to Christmas, so maybe that explains it.

I make my way to the Air France counter to check-in my suitcase, but not without initially heading for the area where the SAS and Lufthansa counters are, out of habit.

The skypriority queue is empty, so this formality will be completed in no time.

Next step: security checks. I often say to myself that the fast track is useless in Gothenburg, given the number of passengers, but this time it really comes in handy.

Phew ! I avoided that.

Controls as fluid as ever and agents as friendly as ever.

All I have to do now is walk through the duty free area to the lounge, where I’ll wait quietly for my flight.

It’s a new lounge called “The Lounge”, but it’s nothing else than the old Vinga lounge.

I leave the lounge on time to head for my boarding gate.

Boarding

When I arrive, the passengers are already huddled around the gate waiting for boarding to begin, while…the passengers on the incoming flight are just starting to exit the aircraft.

A first delay easy to anticipate, but of course no prior announcement is made for passengers who will be waiting for nothing.

We are finally allowed to enter the jetway, only to be stopped a few meters further on.

The wait will be short, but we’re in Sweden in the middle of December and the temperature is freezing.

Waiting for boarding to be completed, I doze off a little before being awakened by movement around me. There’s a problem with one of the aircraft’s doors, and we’re asked to disembark while it’s being repaired and to return an hour later. It’s 6.10 p.m. and, indeed, the boards indicate “information at 7.10 p.m.”.

So I return to the lounge, pour myself a drink and, just to be sure, take a look at the screens a few minutes later. It’s 6.40pm and the flight is marked “last call”.

Along with other passengers, we sprint to the boarding gate, where the staff are practically giving a dressing-down to so-called “latecomers”, even though we weren’t supposed to board for at least 30 minutes.

But I’m too tired to give them a piece of my mind, but other passengers will do that, and rather bluntly.

This time there’s no false start again, I’m on board for this last flight and after leaving Australia and transiting through Japan less than 48 hours earlier I’m just in a hurry to get it over with and get home.

The cabin

Here I find the usual Embraer Hop cabin, due for renewal in the near future.

Legroom is very decent in row 1, but without the comfort of being able to slide your legs under the front seat.

The seat shows no signs of wear and tear, and the overall quality is good, even if I find the seat a little too hard.

As usual, Air France doesn’t block business class seats on this type of aircraft, but luckily I won’t have a seatmate.

We are finally ready to leave.

The flight and the service

We take off and I try to keep my eyes open until the meal trays are served, to avoid the disappointment that befell me the day before between Frankfurt and Gothenburg.

The meal arrives quickly. Sautéed shrimp, pearl pasta with colorful vegetables and lemon lobster sauce, Cantal AOP, Comté AOP, Vanilla cracker cake.

The bread will be hard and not warm, the pearls good and the sauce with lots of flavor but the shrimp a bit bland.

Disappointing? Compared to the outbound flight, I’d say there’s been a marked improvement, if only in the visual aspect. And it tastes a lot better.

It’s unbearably hot in the cabin, which will help me fall asleep until we touch down in Paris.

The crew

Decent in-flight service without passion or overzealousness, but unacceptable behavior on the ground when passengers had relied on the boarding time given by the crew.

Arrival

We park close to the terminal (2G at Roissy means remote parking) and disembark into the polar cold.

Paris loves us, but the fake cabs a little less, who will literally harass passengers and threaten those who tell them they don’t belong there. A constant at Roissy, but as the authorities do nothing…

And that’s it…end of story.

Bottom line

Better than the outward flight, but not enough to reassure me about the state of Air France’s medium-haul service.

The articles about this trip to Australia

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