Review of SAS flight from Paris to Stockholm in Business

This FR is the way of a round trip to Stockholm. It was a last minute decision, and several flights were full, leading to a less than optimum combination (from the fare point of view) :
CDG – ARN : SK2572 Business
ARN – CDG : AF1063 Economy (to be posted later)
Seat selection was equally limited, for the same reason, when I checked in on-line : I could select one of 3 seats only. My luck was that all three were window seats.

I am usually unlucky for that, but this time, I arrived at the platform in the nick of time to hop on a direct train to CDG. I noted that this train had a contraption (on the right) for placing a single suitcase. One day, they will realize that more than a single passenger per car heading directly to CDG has bulky luggage, but at least they started thinking about this issue.

Arrival faster than usual at CDG1 rail station

CDG1 rail station is actually nowhere near Terminal 1, which was built without a rail link, at the time when trains were for people who could not afford to fly. So you need to take a people mover which was built several decades later. Rail buffs will note that the switchgear is in reverse position to change track before reaching the terminal 1 station.

All I needed was to print a BP since I was not going to check luggage. There was probably little waiting at these counters

But the waiting time was zero at these machines

They refused to recognize any of my credit cards to identify me, but the reservation number was god enough and I received this BP on a thin thermal paper which is likely to fade quickly

I had well enough time to go up to the Arrivals level which provides a better view on the planes around. This twin French government A340s were at their usual parking location (they are operated by a dedicated French Air Force unit, and used to ferry troops to trouble spots, possibly evacuate civilians from other trouble spots, and possibly carry lots of officials and journalists to some major event).

OZ 777

I was puzzled by this fancy green livery

And eventually got a shot of this Aer Lingus A320 in Green Spirit livery

Aegean A320

Travel Service 737 (a Czech charter airline)

Lufthansa A321

ANA 787

Back in the terminal : the level below Departures appears to have restaurants…

Going down this quasi circular stairway (or elevators of course) , but I never ventured there.

Going up the famous tubes up and through the hollow core of the cylindrical building. The staff checking the BPs said in a friendly manner she liked the orange hair color of this passenger before me. Revise your stereotypes : he was holding a Mainland China passport!

Another tube leaving down (but not in operation)

CDG Terminal 1 was built as a central round check-in, immigration control and luggage delivery building,

… with seven satellite buildings, each with a boarding room and jet bridges. With time, it was realized that this layout was a bad idea, because it precluded the expansion of any area, and most are now cramped (because the planes are larger, the safety checks are more thorough,… and there are more flights).

The concrete ramp on the right of the satellite in the picture above is actually the ceiling of the underground passage between the terminal and the satellite

You can choose to use a travelator (on the left) or a plain passage on the right.

But nothing in the signage warns you that at the far end, you will have stairs to go up into the satellite, and you cannot see it either because of the initial gentle slope down. If you change your mind, you need to backtrack, because the travelator is continuous from the terminal to the satellite.

There is not much space for the security check, but there were few passengers, and it was fast and courteous.

There was not much space either in that boarding room, but nevertheless well enough seats, especially if you did not insist on being as close as possible to the boarding gate (which is not very useful, since the distances are very limited). But this time, I had the chance to discover the local lounge, at the (not so) far end of the satellite.

The J/Elite passengers of two 737s heading to ARN and CPH were enough to fill nearly all seats available : these two pictures show nearly all of the seating.

In the picture above, the passengers seen on the left edge of the picture above are on higher « bar » seats, facing a window with this view, and that is where I chose to sit.

It provided me a view of this taxiing RAM 738, and a better picture than when I saw her during my initial plane spotting walk around the terminal.

Throwing in this diminutive self use computer area completes the description. Few J/Elite passengers travel with neither laptop nor tablet or smartphone, and I wonder how many passengers use it, or need to print something.

This is what it looked like when most passengers (including those on my flight) had left. (The black plastic bag on the table did not contain rubbish, but stuff of a passenger about to leave)

There was a decent newspaper stand (the outside door and welcome deske were behind it).

A detail of the available titles : five major French newspapers, the International NY Times, the FT, and a collection of Scandinavian papers.

Free internet access was fast ; the minor advantage on the terminal’s free access provided by the airport’s operator was that logging in was faster.

Flight Report’s home page of the day

Several close-ups of the catering counter.

The food was replenished quite quickly from the technical room located just behind, where space seemed equally limited. I took this picture before taking the last plate on the ledge, but a pile of clean plates arrived within an acceptable delay.

SK claims that CDG’s restrictions mandate the use of plasticware:this is an outrageous lie (or else, all other lounges in CDG disregard the regulation),

… and I doubt that the regulations if they exist also mandate the use of cheap plasticware. Eating debris of my fork because the teeth would break at the slightest effort was unpleasant.

This was my selection. Some readers of my recent SIN-DOH report expressed doubts on the hygiene of placing a piece of bread on a bare table, so I was careful to place it on a paper towel this time.
The staff were too busy in the catering area to clean the tables, and the lounge was somewhat too crowded to move around with cleaning gear too.

The designer of the layout of this lounge did a good job, but there are no miracles with so few square meters. There were no toilets: you needed to leave the lounge and reach the (not so) far end of the satellite to use the only ones available.
Imminent boarding of our flight was announced and I left the lounge. Stairs hide the registration number of the aircraft here, but a picture of the front area revealed the identity of LN-RGC.

A landing Airbridge Cargo 747, seen before boarding

What is the difference between a seat in J and a seat in Y ?

None ! (apart from its location in the front rows)

Marathon cleanliness test : failed

Horatius cleanliness test : failed
(that chewing gum had obviously been there long enough to be definitely part of the aircraft)

The seat pitch was decent, at 27 cm from seat edge to magazine pocket

The seat width is pretty standard in Y on single aisle aircraft in 3+3 layout. Business class notwithstanding, the middle seats were occupied too.

The safety card both sides

Pushback from the satellite, with the same 747 taxiing in the background

Easyjet A320

The weather was good enough for using this CAT I runway

Helvetic Airways Fokker 100

Hop! E-170
(Hop! is the brand name shared by Air France's regional subsidiaries : Airlinair, Brit Air and Régional)

Takeoff

This A320 is used for staff training purposes, according to her marking.

You guessed from this picture of the outlying facilities of CDG that the cloud cover would quickly block the view of the ground.

A towel was distributed; it was so HOT that I immediately dropped it on my laptop from fear of hand burns; my more experienced neighbors threw theirs from hand to hand until they had cooled enough. I found the experience unpleasant.

This non-woven tablecloth was distributed (the color was actually light grey).

And then this cardboard box and a piece of bread. The advantage of this box was that I could replace the cover after eating the contents, and place my laptop on top of it to start my report. A conventional meal tray is a plain nuisance in an Economy seat like this one, until the FAs start collecting them.

The tablecloth was wide enough to protect the 6 cm long bread from the myriads of germs waiting on an aircraft tray table to prey on reckless passengers.

There was no choice, and Mrs Marathon would not have liked it because it was quite spicy (but I was OK with it).

The coffee was nothing special

The cloud cover was continuous during the flight until the descent to ARN

This was the only time I saw the sun in a break through the clouds

The last layer of clouds stopped abruptly in the vicinity of ARN which appeared in the distance

ARN is in the center of these picture

Zooming in and getting closer

The same, after image processing

The plane flew past ARN to land south

This would have been a fine view of ARN if it hadn’t been so cloudy that day.

Last view of ARN before lining up to Runway 19L, appearing here in the middle of picture

Nice sun setting light on the fjord

I cheated a little when enhancing the colors of with winglet view

There was not much light for plane spotting while taxiing, and not much plane diversity either.

Taxiing was short, on the other hand I found that there was a lot of walking to reach the platform of the very expensive Arlanda Express train (280 SEK one way, 560 SEK round trip).

For that price, you get a 20 minute ride to T-Centralen, the central station and transportation hub, in a spotlessly clean train

With comfortable seats

And wifi access (and also power ports for each pair of seats), useful for passengers who just landed and want to download their messages… or check if their favorite website’s homepage changed.

This is the end of this report which does not have a tourist bonus because my schedule there did not include time for tourism. Thanks for reading this !