Review of Air France flight from Beijing to Paris in Economy

This is the second segment of a TPE-PEK-CDG trip back in early 2013. This FR begins in the taxi which was driving me back to PEK after spending an evening in Beijing, thanks to the then brand new visa exemption when you connect between two international flights to/from different countries.
The separation of the tollway towards Terminals 2 and 3 is 5-6 km from the airport, but even before that, there were dozens of cars stop on the emergency lane: their drivers were waiting for a call from the passenger that they would collect, saving the expense of the airport’s parking lot. I saw this in a number of other Chinese airports, but noticeably not in PVG.

This is the toll gate ; there was little waiting.

The toll gate reproduces the style of the traditional gates at the entrance of the cities (and of many villages, nowadays).

The access to International / Hong-Kong / Macau / Taiwan Departures: there were actually no flights to the latter three, but all require a passport.

You needed to show your passport to reach the check in counters : an efficient means of filtering the passengers in a country where few people have a passport.

Flight MU8665 / AF381 to Paris was listed on time. Note that there were two flights to Bali, which is pronounced the same as Paris in Mandarin, but written differently.

Check-in was as always at Counters B, but I had never seen such an inefficiency in the past five years in PEK. It was 23:03 when I arrived here.

My FB-Silver status had still a few months of life, which gave me access to the Skypriority lines (at the very bottom of the list of eligible travelers). There were exactly seven passengers before me in the line.

Once checked in, I took this picture at 23 :24, just after being checked in : it had taken 21 minutes to handle eight passengers including myself. There were twenty-some passengers in the non-Skypriority waiting line and two open positions to handle them: my status probably did not save me much time, if any. There was also a position for dropping lugage for passengers having checked in on the internet.

It was a novelty then : for several years, it had been supposedly possible to check in on AF’s website, you entered plenty of information, selected your seat, and at the last Enter key, there was a message informing you that OLCI was not available in PEK.

I then went through immigration, where much to my surprise, I did not receive an exit stamp on my visa exemption stamp. I had entered Mainland China on the brand new 72h visa exemption status, which had come in force on 1st January that year. But since my continuation flight was the next day (actually the same night, but after midnight), the exemption was valid only until that day. There was a number on that permit, and PEK had delivered 300 of them that day at 4:30 pm : it was both many and few. I guess that most would not have applied for a visa and stayed airside.

I saw the AF crew on the way, and that confirmed what a FA had told me several years before: the AF FAs can chose a preferential area of destination, and it so happens that the older FAs tend to choose Asia. None of them on that crew was indeed young, but that did not stop them from being friendly and smiling.
Wifi internet access was free, but you had to register with a Chinese cell phone number (and for this purpose, Taiwan is not part of China !), or at a counter that I did not really try to find.

A rather long walk in an eeringly empty terminal, where all the luxury shops were closed : only a couple food and tobacco/alcohol duty-free shops were still open.

Two lounges which welcome passengers on quite motley sets of airlines.

Their entrances had of course Chinese New Year decorations.

There was a children area, with more kids than usual in this kind of facility, because this was the beginning of the Chinese New Year vacation.

Plane spotting was limited at that time in the night, and mostly CZ.

This is the 77W which was going to fly me to CDG

The Air Astana aircraft heading to Almaty, at the end of pushback, behind a jet bridge.

These internet access computers were all turned off.

Boarding was supposed to be by zone, but the zones were not called for boarding, and it did not seem to create any problems.

There were very few poser ports in the room, all were already in use. It was not a problem for me: boarding was within a half hour and I had then a spare laptop battery, which meant that I could manage until the arrival in Paris on battery power. Depending on the signs in the airport, the lithium batteries were limited to 100 or 160 Wh, but mine was 55 Wh anyway.

Boarding started and was more orderly than it seems on this picture.

A peek at the business class, with the old seats – this was before the Best and Beyond cabin was announced.

And the Y cabin

Strangely, there was a vast majority of French passengers at check-in when I was there, but the split in this seciton of the aircraft was about 50-50.

It was a narrow seat, but an even narrower touchscreen, which left ample space for a remote control.

This screen size is usually derided as Gameboy technology. Picky readers will object that the production of the Gameboy ceased in 2003, well before this aircraft entered revenue service on 18 May 2007.

The safety demonstration was translated in sign language

The seat pitch was acceptable, but the 3-4-3 layout translated into a very narrow aisle, through which my laptop case of standard dimensions could barely make it, and very narrow seats where I felt constrained even though I am a rather small built. The seat was very hard and reclined only the symbolic thickness of a seat, and the plane’s inner wall was ice cold (I insulated myself with the small pillow): the comfort was what I would have expected from a long haul LCC. It was a far cry from the previous flight on Air China from Taipei.

Another illustration of the seat pitch : a window and a half, which is standard in Economy.

The sfety card, or what remained of it

The amenity kit was hidden in the plastic bag containing a cheap headset : an eye mask and a wet tissue and that was all!

About the audio offering, these three identical Carmen icons corresponded actually to the three CDs of the works, but CD#2 was useless because the soundtrack was hopelessly damaged.

Two tails seen through the window.

And another CZ A319

We waited for a long time for the landing of three planes before taking off from Runway 36R

See here the well lit curve of the Airport Express line. This dedicated rail link opened to operation in 2007; it goes to Dongzhimen, at the north-east corner of the second ring road, with an intermediate stop at Sanyuanqiao (“Threepence Bridge”)

I found the plane very noisy, from the beginning of the climb, and that it vibrated a lot. Maybe that was because my previous experiences in that type of aircraft was in business class, ahead of the engines.
Time for dinner came. I was already typing the FR of my previous flight on my laptop and the FA just ignored me after serving my neighbors. I watched her go to the next row, and the flabbergasted look of my Chinese neighbor. I told her ironically: 看起来，她们觉得因为我工作，我不用吃饭。很有趣。(Apparently, they think that since I’m working, I do not need to have dinner. I find it very interesting) . Once she had recovered from the surprise of my speaking Chinese, she gestured forcefully to the FA who came back to my level:
- [standard FA smile] You did not want to have dinner ?
- [ironic smile] You did not offer me anything, I believe ?
She offered her deepest apologies for the goof. She had decently recovered; I had deliberately not made a move to observe how she would handle the situation once confronted to her mistake.
It was served quickly, and eaten quickly, because it was cold and without a choice. Remember that its was already nearly 3 am, in PEK’s time zone, and nobody wanted a lengthy dinner.

It was a decent meal, which could not be compared to the meal on a domestic Chinese flights, due to the schedule. I asked for coffee: there was none and there would be none. The captain soon afterwards apologized soon afterwards on the PA, explaining that there was a failure on the water system which made it impossible to provide hot drinks.
My neighbors were nice people speaking only Mandarin, with a thick Beijing accent, and I did not want to disturb them. Four or five hours later, they went to the toilets, and I took this opportunity to go there too. Note the bottle of water, because there was no tap water due to the failure (it had been announced too). The flush was on another system and worked, and the toilets were clean. I am always amused by the female pictogram on the babycare board, as if men could not do it too.

Since I was up, I went to the rear galley. The FAs were chatting together: this was not like on an SQ night flight where the FAs keep passing around proposing food and drinks in Economy. A major advantage of a passenger squeezed in a 3-4-3 layout is that the workload can be dramatically reduced if it is not expected to receive anything from them. Sure, they did go through the cabin to check empty handed if everything was OK, but that was it.

So in the galley, for those who could move around (I had seen passengers bringing back food in the cabin, but I did not want to wake up my neighbors), there was still a selection of food left.

This was the offering from close up : bread, miniature fruit skewers, and cups of spaghetti + carrots that I found rather low quality.

And some simple drinks

Breakfast arrived : omelet or Chinese meal for the hot meal ? I chose the Chinese option, expected to be better since the catering ahd been loaded in PEK, and was very satisfied. The orange juice was of the cheapest kind, and there was again no coffee (there were again excuses by the captain after the standard information at the beginning of the descent, which were completely lost in translation by the interpreter).

Another picture of AF’s steerage class,

That was what AF shamelessly called a “modern and comfortable” seat in their in-flight magazine. Modern was debatable with such a small IFE screen. Comfortable it was not.
(Since I do not drink alcohol, I did not ask for any, but did not see any either during the service)

Touchdown on time. Several passengers around me exclaimed : 下雪! (It’s snowing!).

My experience was that luggage delivery was slow in CDG, so I could afford to wait and be among the last passengers leaving the aircraft in order to take a picture of my seat row.

The second Y cabin (the interpreter is in the far right).

The Y+ cabin , en 2-4-2 layout

And the J, in 2-3-2 layout

The reflections did not help taking a picture of the plane at destination.

I remembered the palne registration number geeks, though : F-GSQV had refused to provide hot water that night.

A Chinese guide reminded the schedule of the day to his group

Terminal E’s Departures level was completely empty, seen here from the Arrivals level

A plant decoration on the wall on the left

And this evidently empty children area.

It was a very long distance through this terminal, on foot, on escalators, on a people mover…

… and I eventually reached immigration, where six passengers were enough to clog the automated PARAFE passport and fingerprint reading booths. All others rerouted themselves under the retractable barriers to reach the manned counters. My policeman was the smiling kind, and I could ask him a souvenir entry stamp on my passport, that an EU citizen would not spontaneously receive here.

Now I needed to recover my luggage. I believed they did not come from Haneda, Lagos and other exotic places, and that I had apparently taken a wrong turn somewhere.

It did not really matter: as I had anticipated, the luggage delivery had not yet started when I eventually reached the delivery room which had some Chinese New Year decorations – a good point for the airport.

Since it had not really provided me an advantage in PEK, the only plus from my soon to expire FB Silver membership was the priority tag on my luggage, and they were indeed among the first to be delivered, exactly 60 minutes after the touchdown. As a reference, they had appeared 46 minutes after touchdown in PEK on the previous connecting flight from TPE, and I had no status on that flight.

A rather verbose message on the screens alternated between French and English on the screens to warn passengers against illegal taxis. It was obvious that the police was doing nothing to stop them : several went up to me to propose their service on the short walk to the legitimate taxi station.
[This was in the pre-Uber times, so the situation is now different in this matter]