Review of Air France flight from Paris to Stockholm in Economy

This was another short business trip to Stockholm :
CDG –ARN : AF 1062 You are here, I translated it in French there
ARN – CDG : AF1063 To be posted soon
The story of this flight begins with the OLCI. Air France has recorded that I prefer window seats, and had preassigned me Seat 7A. What AF’s data base cannot record is that I prefer window seats with good lighting conditions for photographic reasons, which means on the right side when flying north in the afternoon.

No problem, you can change (but no earlier than ETD-30h) the seat, and you can do it for free if it is not an exit row. I do not care for exit rows because the extra leg space does not compensate the various constraints. So I changed to Seat 8F, which should have a nice wing view, but then had a doubt and checked Seatguru.com.
Bingo ! Seats 8A and 8F don’t have a window in an AF A321, and that was a no-no. So I changed again to Seat 10F, although the wing might be partly in the way looking aft.
And then I checked again Seatguru.com and bingo! Row 10 does not have windows either.

The only acceptable seat was way back, but I was not going to be in a rush when landing in ARN, and taking an extra quarter of an hour to deplane was not an issue.
When I boarded the plane the day after, I had a look at these seats in Rows 8 and 10 : no window indeed at Row 8, but how did Seatguru not see the window at Row 10 ?

I dutifully received three BPs by e-mails in French. What was amusing was that AF sent me a reminder in English to check-in half an hour after I had already received the first BP. Obviously, these e-mails are generated by computer systems which do not communicate with each other.

Getting to Terminal 2F’s parking lot requires driving beyond the terminals and turn back, and since the parking lots of Terminal 2E and 2F actually communicate with each other, I thought it would save time to take the Terminal 2E parking lot entrance. Bad idea : it is a continuous parking lot at Level -2, but this level was nearly full, and at Level -3, there is a solid partition between both levels.

I had plenty of time, parked close to the access to Terminal 2E , and decided to walk, actually a long way, because I missed the shortest way between the terminals , so much so that the only signage was for buses.

It took all the longer that I stumbled on that barrier (you can’t see the forty-odd travelers waiting behind in that picture), possibly because of a suspicious item being investigated – I did not ask for a confirmation.

My best option was to wait, since I could afford wasting the time needed to check a suspicious item, and took a picture of that AF A321.

There was not much waiting, and I stayed ahead of the forty-odd pack pf passengers to avoid sudden crowding. It was early afternoon on an ordinary day, and the waiting was very reasonable at the security check.

My flight was announced on time at the FIDS

Paul Andreu designed Terminal 2F so that it be brightly lit by the overhead glass. In theory, it should look like this

But he had forgotten that planes carry passengers, or rather that passengers are often waiting for planes to carry them, so that instead of looking like this

… there are often lots of soon to board passengers blocking the way

Priority one for me was to go to the toilets, at the lower level, going down these escalators

The toilets were clean, but they were as usual too few (again, the architect underestimated the traffic), and the one for handicapped passengers was unavailable (but there was probably another one on the ladies’ side).

I did not find a water fountain in the terminal, and the only place way to drink water for free is by using these taps. (In China, tap water is not safe for drinking, but you have cold and hot water fountains in all airports).

Air France offers free copies of a reasonable array of mostly French newspapers. They used to be alongside the corridor, but that was too much in the way and they are now in the bridges connecting both sides of the jetty. (You can also download electronic versions of magazines, but I do not have a tablet, and a smartphone's screen is too small for that use IMO).

I guess many passengers aren’t aware that they are there, so there was an ample supply, enough reading matter to handle the waiting time of both flights, when typing this flight report on my laptop was not an option.

Empty seats at a gate without departing flights around. Three pairs of power ports for 28 seats is not many, but I know a number of airports which do not provide any to their passengers.

Two PS4 game stations, unusually with patronage

AZ A320 spotted in the distance

The plane had arrived

It was not going to be on time, since the loading of the catering ended a couple minutes before ETD.

CDG is not very spotter-friendly : getting a side shot of the aircraft was impossible, but at least I got the registration number.

A screen close to the gate displayed the seating layout of Jet Airways Flight 6829, a.k.a AF1063

Free wifi internet access (requiring some navigation to validate that I only wanted the free option), with enough bandwidth for displaying FR’s home page.

A longish line had formed before boarding had started.

That is when I wondered again why I had this red SkyPriority logo on the top right of my BP

Bingo ! I was flying in Economy and I have no status with FB, but my Economy Flex fare was in the “We also welcome” list of second class priority passengers.

Going down the jetbridge with wide clean windows

The cabin was not going to remain that empty : AF’s flight to/from ARN are notoriously full.

I could have had a window seat further in front, but this was a window seat on the correct side, and that was all what mattered to me.

These were the old, but comfortable seats

I seldom if ever recline my seat, but you could

The seat width between armrests was a decent 45 cm

But a window seat has an 8 cm space, beyond the armrest

Seat pitch is a standard25 cm from seat limit to the magazine pocket. OK, but a couple centimeters less than what you get on a Chinese domestic flight.

Marathon carpet cleanliness test : passed

The safety card, both sides

Same plane spotting while waiting for the pushback : Hop! E-170

AF A318

AF A320, in standard and Skyteam liveries

Air Europa 738

An ANA 787 landing in the distance

AF 777-300ER

Pushback at ETD+22’, and taxi past these idle snow plows in tiger livery

Alignment on Runway 27L

The runway was wet ; this was the water vapor created by the reactors before lifting off.

G-GTAK was airborne at ETD+42’

The town of Louvres. Its name predates by many centuries that of the unrelated Louvre Museum, but both names may derive from the Latin word lupus which evolved into loup in French, meaning “wolf”, of which there were certainly many there in the early Middle Ages.

The town of Goussainville

The cloverleaf interchange of freeway N104 with Highway D316

The strangely triangular leaves makes it an easily recognizable landmark

Turning towards ARN above the Oise River, an affluent of the Seine River

The locks at Bruyères sur Oise

The golf Club du Lys Chantilly, and the town of Chantilly in the background

The posh city of Chantilly is famous for its castle and it horse racetrack

Close up on the castle

The meal, as served

The hot wrap was labeled “Mozza champis”, presumably the abbreviation of “mozarella – champignons”, the latter word being mushrooms, in French.

There was indeed a lot of melted cheese inside, but I didn’t detect the presence of mushrooms. The rest, yogurt and cut apples, could not go wrong because these are so basic supplies.

Some clouds initially

There was a nearly full moon, but a thick cloud cover on most of the way

This attempt at an air-to-air shot was doomed : the other plane was really too far away

A white body with a dark band around the front section of the fuselage, and dark wingtips : any suggestion for the identification of the airline ?

Hultsfred airport, a former Swedish air base, has been privatised and is now used by a flying club only.

The town of Hulstfred

The town of Gamleby, in the lower left corner of the picture, and Västervik in the top right corner, at the far end of the long fjord connecting Gamleby to the sea

Close up on Västervik

The maze of islands around Krakmarö Island. the dark line in the picture is the contrail of a plane that I either missed or never caught up with

Utö and Nattarö islands

Drevviken lake

This was the route when approaching ARN, tracked by Flightradar24.

A distinct set of buildings in Bollmora, in suburban Tyresö municipality.

The ferries which serve Stockholm, leaving towards Åland and Helsinki, for instance, take a long and winding channel until they reach the open Baltic sea.

Three of them could be seen on that route

One ship (a tiny white dot) under the winglet, and a closer one to the right, with the city of Åkersberga in the foreground.

The Österåker prison, clearly divided into two sections

Crossing ARN’s Runway 08/26

Poor lighting conditions for a Caravelle in poor condition.

A Flybe Dash 8 lifting off

A Falcon 7X

Approaching ARN’s Terminal 2

There were three 767s there (including a freighter) :

This old 747-200 transformed in a hotel is a landmark of ARN

You can buy your rail tickets from the machines alongside the wall behind the passengers, while waiting for your checked luggage. Why don’t we have similar SNCF (French Railways) ticketing machines in the luggage delivery rooms in CDG?

I could not ignore that there are buses to Stockholm’s central stations

But since my company is OK for paying 540 SEK round trip on the much faster (and presumably more comfortable) Arlanda Express train

… why not take it ?

This was not the last presumed suspicious package in my trip : these escalators down to the subway were blocked by staff, like in CDG. But there were ways around it, and I did not wait until they were released

This is the end of this flight report, and the beginning of as much of a tourist bonus as I could make in a short and busy business trip.
I was surprised to see this long line of runners from the subway before reaching Gamla Stan station

I did not identify what this race was – what surprised me most was that it was scheduled on a weekday, which never happens in France.

My hotel was between the Ericsson Globe (the round structure left) and the Tele2 Arena (the stadium on the right), seen here from Flight AF1062, back in March 2014.

This is was it looks like when you are next to it. The twin tracks are for cabins which run all the way to the top of the structure to provide a panorama of the area.

Next to it, this is the short side of the Tele2 Arena

The Tele2 Arena, the Quality Hotel Globe and the Ericsson Globe

The Quality Hotel Globe ? I had a small room with a view downward to a canvas cover inside the atrium , upward to the non-transparent cover of the atrium and sideways to a tiny portion of the sky through atrium windows.

And when an Australian guest asked if the hotel would bring her party’s half dozen of piece of luggage to their rooms, the receptionist said “yes, but this is charged extra”. She could not believe it, and, within hearing range, couldn’t either.

I thought I might end this bonus with a plane shot when I took a walk outside, but bad luck, the only plane I saw departing from the domestic Bromma airport turned just overhead, so I could only identify the type as a probable Dash 8-400

Thanks for reading me up to here !