Review of Air France flight from Barcelona to Paris in Economy

A visual of this entire journey to San Francisco:
Total distance flown will be 6,116 mi / 9,843 km

This trip report's flight between Barcelona and Paris will take an 1hr 35 mins at distance of 533 mi/ 858 km

introduction

Welcome to another trip report!
This trip marks the end of my January-February trip around Europe and I will be starting my journey back home to the states from Barcelona. I booked this portion of the trip back to the US with points and my original itinerary was suppose to be BCN-JFK-SFO, both on DL. A few days before departure I had received an email from DL that there was a significant schedule change to my trip and if I'd like to choose new flight options I was welcome to do so. The first itinerary that caught my eye was this early morning departure out of BCN to SFO via CDG on AF. I chose this itinerary for two reasons, one it would save me from getting a hotel for the night as my original flight would have departed at noon to JFK  the following day on DL. Second, I've never flown long haul with AF so it would give me a chance to review a new route. With that said, I arrived the night before on TP from Lisbon (you can find that trip report here) and only had to wait about 4-5 hours landside until the AF checkin desks open at 4am. If your asking why I didn't just wait airside for my flight the next morning was because TP deemed my American sized hand luggage as too big back in Porto and had to reclaim it once I landed in BCN. Otherwise it would have been a million times easier for me to just stay airside and wait for my AF flight since I had no checkin luggage.
However that didn't go as planned and after collecting my bags I waited for a few hours at some closed cafes and sat there working on my computer until it got closer to 4am where I headed up stairs to checkin.     

check-in

As it got closer to 4am I proceeded up stairs and went outside to say one more good bye to Barcelona before embarking on my adventure back to the US. I was also quite excited to be flying on AF again as my last time flying with them was in the spring of 2017. It would be interesting to see what things have changed since then.

Upon entering the departure hall it was quite empty which is strange for me to see as every time I had been to BCN it was always crowded with people.

My flight (AF 1449) is among the first departures of the day from BCN. We have the same departure time as with KLM 1662 heading to Amsterdam. 

Found the AF desks and a friendly agent helped me print my boarding pass. 

Check-in went smoothly and I got both my stock boarding cards for my records. I was asked by the agent if I wanted to purchase an upgrade for business class on my CDG-SFO for 700 € which I kindly rejected. However in retrospect I think that was quite a nice offer to enjoy business lie flat seats for an 11 hr flight and should of taken on the offer but was quite delirious from not sleeping the night before and couldn't think straight but oh well. Off I headed to security control. 

There was virtually no line at the security check point and made it back airside in just 5 minutes. 

Again, it was quite surreal to see BCN this desolate as I walked to find my gate. The few times that I've been through here it was jammed pack with people. I guess early morning flights aren't popular here ?.  

Luckily on my boarding card it did say our departure gate of C72 so I made my way straight there. Normally in Europe gates are announced at time of boarding which is quite annoying.  

Here's a look at my A321 that'll be taking me up to Paris this morning.

Some information about my plane:
Flight number: AF 1449
Aircraft: Airbus A321-212
Registration: F-GTAT
Delivered: March 11, 2008
Age: 15.1 years

boarding

Boarding began shortly after. It got quite chaotic as at the next gate over (C73) they were simultaneously boarding the KLM bound for Amsterdam. I eventually boarded with group 3.

Despite boarding in group 3, I was amongst the first to enter the aircraft.

A look at the mini euro business class section which only consisted of 4 rows on today's flight. 

Entering main cabin.

Made it to my window seat 28F which I chose free of charge during rebooking. Choosing the best seat with great window alignment was thanks to aerolopa. 

Legroom wasn't bad but wasn't impressive neither. These seats offer 30" pitch.

My view for the next 1.5hr.

Though the seat pitch wasn't impressive, the cabin felt quite nice especially the padded leather seats which notably felt very comfortable unlike my previous flight on TP that virtually had almost no padding.

Boarding was complete and the loads for this morning flight to CDG were about 90% full.

pushback/takeoff

We pushed back on time and shortly after the manual safety demonstration was performed by the FA's.

There's my TP A320neo that brought me from Lisbon just a few hours earlier. 

We eventually lined up on the runway for takeoff. For some unknown reason my camera decided to not want to focus just as we were taking off so I apologize for the blurry images. 

Eventually my camera went back to normal just in time to catch once last glimpse of Cataluña. Hope to be back soon!

inflight services

About 25 minutes into the flight the FA's sprung into the cabin and started the inflight service.

Inflight service consisted of a butter cookie and a choice of drink, I went for a coffee naturally. This was underwhelming compared to my flight I took on AF back in 2017 when they would serve a warm croissant au chocolat on all their morning flights.

This was from my last flight on AF from Paris to Madrid back in April 2017. It was pretty consistent that they always served this on their morning flights.

Gradually the sun began to rise as we got closer to Paris.

Initial descent/landing

Before I knew it we were beginning our initial descent into CDG.

Once again, Paris was under thick cloud cover this morning so as we went beneath the clouds it was still dark as night.

Welcome to Paris ??!

arrival at gate

We arrived at the gate 9 minutes ahead of schedule. 

One last look at our A321, thanks for the safe ride!

Now I had less then 2 hours to connect to my SFO bound flight which was a nightmare of itself which I'll talk about on my next trip report.

This concludes the trip report, thanks for reading!