Review of Air France flight from Lyon to Paris in Economy

bonjour cher antoine de saint-exupéry!

As part of my job, I have been travelling to Bordeaux a lot of times in the past year, up to a weekly basis at some point. This was the first time I experienced a "regular" flying experience, where even some crew member might recognise and greet me!
Fortunately, my job let us choose the airline we want to fly with, and so as a Flying blue frequent flyer I did not choose the orange plane over Air France.. 

Flying blue Miles earned with this flight: 291
Status earned: 2 XP 

Air France app is quite comprehensive, you can easily navigate through options, travel tips, and of course your bookings and the service you will have on board.. Of course, like many others, the app offers you the possibility to check in online and get your boarding pass.

As an elite skyteam member, I was able to choose for free, from the time of booking my seat.

AT LYON - SAINT EXUPéRY AIRPORT

Since the covid times, Lyon Airport closed its terminal 1 and left the terminal 2 open, and so when before the Terminal 1 was mostly used by an Air France clientele, you could spot some orange birds in there too.  

After going through security - very fast - less than 3 min!, I was able to go to the quite modest duty-free area.

I have been to a few airports in France, and I think Lyon is the place where there is the most an established routine… In gate Q0X Air France is almost the only airline to use them but Q06 has been invariably my departing gate to Paris for the last months or so… 

Quite unfortunately the Air France lounge of Lyon was closed, a member staff told me it wasn't so much because of Covid, but due to the presence of Easyjet in the same terminal, they don't want to mix passengers. 

Walking on the left of this gate allows you to have a splendid view on the Q gates and our babybus of the day.

ONBOARD THE A318

Aircraft: Airbus A318-111
Registration: F-GUGC
Engines: 2x CFM56
Age: 17 Years
Layout: Y131

The AvGEEK bit

With 18 units Air france is the main operator of A318s. The smallest airbus plane can carry 131 passengers. The A318 has a taller tail of 80 cm than the rest of the A320 family which has the same specs (12,79m for the A318 instead of 11,76cm for family). This is due to the efforts on ruddering as the plane is shorter.
Air France has ordered 60 A220-300s to replace both is A318s and A319s. 

The good thing about boarding amongts the first passengers is that you can have a cabin relatively quiet, where you can take picture without having people to weirdly stare at you!

Quite unfortunately the A318 fleet is equipped with these recarro seats that really are more compatible with a low-cost airline. 

The purple thing is what the crew gives to all and every passenger to clean your seats and especially the arm rests.

When we pushed back that I switchedon the WiFi.  

We aligned on the 35L runway for take-off as usual.

and the Alps…

There are still no paper magasines on board and so I read it on the app. 

Always a bit sad to see how shrunk the domestic network has.

and the fleet section, where we can see that the A350 number is increasing.

AT PARIS - CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT

As usual, we arrived at the terminal 2F, the aircrafts operating within mainland France and the Shenguen area.

I arrived in the terminal building and headed towards the next terminal building lounge.