This is my first time flying somewhere other than the back of the bus (economy class), with my upgraded return sector to premium economy so I could fly with dad. With Air France's premium economy comes several priority accesses to queues, including check-in and passport control.
Our experience began interestingly at the first of these priority queues, at check-in. As you know, check-in typically opens 3 hours before. We asked the 'greeter' at the priority queue if we could check in before then, and she said "yes, yes, the economy check-in queue is over that way". Ah, you don't even want to ask if we have a priority ticket? I may never travel premium class again, but really?
A quick check-in process would have combined with an even quicker passport control, had the priority passport control access not been seemingly blocked off. I said to dad, "let's see if it's open". We were allowed through, by ducking under the temporary barrier. So Air France gets a very low mark so far.
The priority access was very quick though, once we figured it out. We had a couple of hours to kill, but decided against 25 Euros each to access the premium lounge, which is a compromise - you can buy access, which economy passengers can't do.
Eventually boarding time rolled around. It took near enough to 40 minutes to cram the 500 people on to the A380. We made our way to our seats, once again at the back of the upper deck:
Premium economy
They say first impressions are lasting impressions, and it was about what I expected. It was a decent amount of extra space, but not amazing. Food and drink service was reasonably plentiful throughout the flight, although it wasn't that much more frequent than what I experienced in economy on the way over:
Dinner and brekky
Here you see Air France's two meal offerings. The dinner was quite reasonable, with a pineapple upside down cake and a bit of stale bread (stale bread seems to be a thing on Air France, judging by internet reviews). Breakfast was worse. A sausage with some beans and eggs that didn't even look like eggs. More stale bread. Even the hot chocolate wasn't that great. And to think this was on the A380, which Air France spruiks as the 'best of the best'. I don't think I'll be back.
The flight was on time though, so I guess that was something. A quick look around at Hong Kong Airport, before we board our Cathay flight back to Oz!
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