I've probably made 80 trips to France on AF from the East Coast and never had any major problems with them, except that their connection times to other flights can be a nightmare (but always work out, though hair-raising at times). Never lost any luggage. Food and drink and service are always at least as good as other carriers, which is maybe faint praise, but no horror stories, ever.

Thanks for your great replies. To answer a couple of questions; No checked luggage, I travel very light. 1:50 minute to switch planes, both at terminal 2E. Virgin cost more than British Airways and the return is far to late for me to get home at a reasonable hour. ( It takes me around 5/6 hours from SFO.

I always fly AF, I can't even comprehend someone paying $600 more to fly BA for the same itinerary and same level of seating. I think they are excellent, and I've never had a single problem with them and I've been flying them for 10-20 years, probably. I really don't like BA at all, but would fly them if the dollars were reversed but I really can't even understand why you'd consider them in this case. There isn't hardly any airline I would do that for (pay $600 more) if they were major regular international airlines. Maybe to avoid some Russian airline or something I thought was dangerous.

I have to laugh when I read some of the comments, especially about "those awful American carriers"

Terminal 2E is really quite good. It's A-B-C-D that are in urgent need of renovation.

For $600, this is a no-brainer. Go with Air France. Their PV product is decent enough and an all T2E connection is pretty painless and the terminal is actually pretty nice, at least the main part, the satellite is very ordinary.

<I>I have flown on the upper deck on AF - which might be "Economy Plus" now</I>

Nope. PV is a true premium economy service and uses newly designed seats. The UD of the 747 is just economy with a couple extra inches of legroom. FWIW, the 747s will not be getting PV, as they are set to be retired over the next couple years.

The last time we had a connection through CDG we had 45 minutes between a flight coming in from Marseille and the outbound one home to Boston. I don't remember any problem getting from one terminal to another other than passing a man telling the security agent that his "wife hadn't meant to hit the inspector looking through her bag".

That man was not your husband, right?

I think a lot of the stress about AF connecting flights is due to the fact that they are so efficient rather than the contrary. People get totally freaked out if they have not arrived at their second boarding gate 20 minutes before the flight. AF thinks it is fine to stroll up 5 minutes before door closes.

(I count myself among the people who freak out, but I have many colleagues and friends who think that 5 minutes is excellent. You sit down, you fasten your seatbelt, and the plane leaves.)

I have to disagree. We arrived at our gate at CDG 10 minutes before the flight departed and were refused boarding. Our plane from Heathrow was an hour late because of the terrible weather, and so we had to wait 2-1/2 hours for the next connection to Nice.

i used to work for air france (corporate headquarters) for years, and i would still fly them.
the in flight service is incomparable.

No Nikki, that man was not my husband. He would know enough not to apologize for me.

Underhill by chance were you connecting from a non AF flight?

Underhill, the flight may have been full already. Unlike me, you are not allowed to fly on a crew seat in such cases. ;)

I am intrigued when I see comments have been removed by moderators. What could cause such passion on an AF thread? How bad could it be?

At any rate, I love AF. I also like Lufthansa.

I agree, in general, I've not had bad experiences with airlines. Even the "bad experiences" fade from memory once I get to my destination.

I've always made it to my destination alive - the rest is gravy!

Flygirl, many of the comments removed are ads. Before they started signaling when a comment had been removed, we just weren't aware of how many ads popped up and were zapped before too many people noticed them.