April 2018 saw me fly Air France’s European business class for the first time, between London Heathrow (LHR) and Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) and back.  The flights were bought as part of a London to South Africa ticket, but I’ll be reviewing the long haul sectors separately. And because all of my previous intra-Europe business class flights have been with British Airways (BA), I shall often use BA as a comparison in this article.

We were invited to check in online 48 hours before the flight, but, as usual, I didn’t choose to do this, as my seats had already been reserved at the time of booking, at no charge. That’s the first positive mark for Air France over BA, as the latter doesn’t let one do that.

Check-in for Air France at LHR Terminal 4, is at the right hand end of the terminal building (as you look at the terminal from its front entrance), along with all of the other Skyteam Alliance airlines which operate from LHR.

After my customary niggle with rude security officers, we made our way to the SkyTeam Business Class lounge.  But because we were flying first class from CDG to Johannesburg later in the evening, we were escorted to a ‘VIP’ annexe to the lounge, which came as quite a surprise. The main lounge was quite large, over two floors, with views of the apron, which I like, a buffet food area on each floor and a bar. There were separate areas for sleeping and also shower suites.  The most striking element of its decoration were several ‘living walls’ of sub-tropical greenery, amongst otherwise white curved walls.  The VIP lounge was cosier, designed for about ten guests, (though Mr. A and I were the only ones in it) and, to my dismay, it didn’t have airfield views, in fact it was windowless.  Overall I think the main business class lounge was pretty good. We drank a bottle of Jules Feraud reserve NV rose champagne, but I didn’t eat anything apart from a few warm mini churros with chocolate sauce, which were very moreish. 8/10

We had a very short walk to Gate 19 where we boarded flight AF1281, an Airbus A319 registered F-GRHT and seated ourselves in row 2. Doors were closed on time at 17:35, but with a queue of nine planes in front of us, we didn’t take off until 18:00.  Like many of its competitors, Air France does not have a distinctly separate business class cabin; they use a flexible curtain to divide business and economy seats, which are all exactly the same, with the same legroom. Although the seats are configured 3-3, like BA, Air

France keeps the middle seats of each three empty for Business class, to give the feeling of more space.  Seats are in dark blue leather with red stitching, and a red leather antimacassar, but legroom was not all all generous (the same as on BA). But this was only to be a short flight, and luckily the person in front of me didn’t recline his seat during the journey.

Despite the short flight time, a light meal/snack is served and then rapidly collected. There was an offer of bread and Air France’s ‘signature’ cheesy bread sticks, to go with a small bresaola bap (OK), a pear and honey compote (not so good) and a mini doughnut and apple eclair (OK). Taittinger NV was poured from a standard-sized bottle.  Service was friendly and we landed on time at 19:50.  Overall this flight was fine, though, as is the way in Europe these days, not a patch on what Business Class used to be, or should be like 6/10.

The return flight on 12th April was a very similar story except that we didn’t see the Business Class lounge because we were in the La Premier (First class) lounge. Flight AF1580 was operated by Airbus A319 F-GRXE, onboard service was again very swift and the morning snack was light and easier on the eye than on the palate. Too much sugar. 5.5/10 Doors closed fifteen minutes late at 10:25, we were airborne at 10:58 after a long taxi, and we landed in LHR fifteen minutes late at 10:44, despite seemingly ‘travelling back in time’.

I don’t know the cost of these flights because they were part of a long haul service via Paris, so I can’t comment on my perceived value.  But I was surprised that I found things overall to be a little below the standards of BA’s ‘Club Europe’, which I thought were as low as things could go. Service was better than one might expect from the French, but catering and legroom were both derisory.  5/10

Our bags weren’t loaded onto the plane at CDG, but they were delivered to our home the next day.  This was an annoyance, but as this is only the second time it has happened to me in decades of flying, I accepted it.  A couple of days later Air France emailed me to tell me they were giving both me and Mr A 20,000 ‘miles’ on our Flying Blue account as compensation for the bag problem. This was very generous, given our flight booking only awarded us 18,000 miles!  Excellent service recovery!