SandS092306

Has anyone flown Air France? If so how was your experience?

Our travel agent has suggested flying with them when we go to Italy.

CotswoldScouser

More times than I can count. Always lived to tell the tale.

Questions like this on this board always attract a disproportionate number of people with a grudge. Simple truth: all major intercontinental airlines (apart from Singapore at one end and Garuda Indonesia at the other) are more or less interchangeable. 99% of all cattle class journeys are somewhere between sort of OK-ish and really pretty mediocre.

Where yours will fall within that is altogether a matter of chance.

BUT what's not a matter of chance is that any AF flight from outside Europe to Italy requires you to change planes AND GO THROUGH IMMIGRATION at CDG. And AF's scheduling almost invariably makes this truly horrid - and almost impossible.

If at all possible: if you have to change planes, do it at Frankfurt, Zurich or Amsterdam. Which means, mostly, Lufthansa, Swiss or KLM.

Flying to France with AF is perfectly fine. Changing at CDG is you don't have to is to be avoided at all costs.

Statia

I've flown them several times and find them to be fine. The meals are certainly better than what I'm used to on American....at least as far as airline food goes.

Leely

I've flown them but only to Paris and Marseille. I like the direct SFO-CDG flight because it feels quick to me.

To Italy? Hmm, haven't flown them to Italy. Most recently flew AA to Rome. Didn't love it but cattle class is cattle class. I guess I'd probably just go with lowest price/easiest connections. If that's Air France so be it.

Good luck and enjoy your holiday.

rkkwan

You can find my very long "coach flyer" report on the Airlines forum for my flights from Houston to Rome on 12/24-25:

http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34730280

[Second half of that thread is about flying CO back, so you can ignore that.]

As for CDG, I had a 65-minute schedule connection and I made it. However, I was also lucky because they changed the arrival terminal. I think 90-minutes would a time I'd find "comfortable" doing a US-CDG-Italy connection.

nonnafelice

Here is a recent thread comparing Alitalia and Air France that might be helpful.

http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34754193

ira

Hi S,

What CS said.

I also would be uncomfortable with anything less than a 90 min connection at CDG.

Woody

We have flown on Air France over a dozen times, and are very satisfied.

In November, we flew to CDG, and had 90 minutes to make the connection to our flight to Venice. We had no problem at all.

Next month, we are flying AF from Los Angeles to CDG for our connecting flight to Rome.

Woody

Tulips

An elderly lady I know was downgraded from business to economy, while flying on her own on a transatlantic flight. They were rude too; what did she expect, flying on a busy day at the beginning of school holidays. And even if you book a specific seat in business class (and pay a business class fare) you cannot be sure of where you will be seated, according to Air France.

Therese

I fly Air France pretty frequently, including to Italy. I connect at CDG, and have never missed a flight despite short connection times. All good experiences.

As bad as CDG is, it's still better than Malpensa (Milan), where you'll often connect when flying in and out of Milan. Not nearly so busy an airport, but also not nearly so efficient an airport.

parisnow

Agree with Ira. I used Air France from Chicago to Paris and then Paris to Rome. Remember feeling like OJ Simpson running through the airport while they were paging us because the connecting flight was leaving. Luckily we stopped at an information desk, showed them are tickets and they called the departing gate to let them know we were running to them.