V-Flyer

This is a bit of a long TR for a very short flight - sorry!

We booked this because of the offer of econ seats for £80 return that I'd seen on an AF email. I doubt that we'll be flying Emirates or Singapore to tie up to travel an any of their A380s.

We had originally thought we'd fly out one day & return the next but decided to make a long weekend of it. As Paris is the city of romance I took a couple of books.

I did OLCI a while after the permitted 30 hours, & after browsing available seats decided to take our given seats of 40A & B. These are located at the rear of the wing & towards the rear of a section. I think that there was only one row behind us in our cabin.

I can't remember the last time I flew out of T4 so that was a novelty. We parked the car at Q Park & were quickly transferred to T4. However, as it's around the other side of LHR it does take a fair few minutes. We only had hand baggage so went straight to security which didn't take long.

After a quick coffee in Starbies with a table right by a window that afforded a good view of aircraft movements, we headed towards gate 6A.

As stated previously there was some confusion from BAA as to boarding, be it 6A or 6B. There were AF staff ensuring all pax were in the correct queues & boarding itself was very speedy. I thought it'd take ages as there are so many pax to board. Using 2 gates really makes a positive difference.

We found our seats & loaded our hand baggage into the overhead lockers which are a good size .

Also I could stand up in a window seat without being hunched over - excellent .

I sat down & thought how comfy the seats were .
There are adjustable headrests & also footrests.
My knees didn't touch the seat in front of me .

Each individual screen & also the central screens all had tail camera live images which we thought was amazing

Take off was delayed for some reason but who cared as part of our short break was the journey. We trundled along the runway for ages but looking out of the window & then at the screen of the tail camera images was fascinating - I know, I'm easily pleased.

Eventually we took off & we were waiting for a roar of the engines but it never arrived. Yes, there was an increase in noise but not at all how I imagined it would be. The flight was remarkably quiet, amazing.

The was a drinks & nibbles round & the red wine was most accepptable The man next to 'love-him-as-I-do-but' was asleep for the entire flight so I'm pleased he didn't take a valuable window seat.

I spent the flight taking photos, the same as the majority of window seat pax. I had thought that I'd find the cabin claustrophobic either because of it being a long tube, & then when I realised that there were several cabin areas I'd feel hemmed in, but not a bit of it.

I didn't visit the toilets as I didn't wish to interupt the CC doing the quick drinks round. I wanted to just to take a photo or 2 to post on here I'm that sad.

We landed with a bit of a bounce & then taxiied for ages to T2E but so what. Disembarking was a doddle as 2 exitways, upper & lower were used.

After disembarking, loads of pax were taking photos as the gate we'd parked at afforded good views of the plane.

We were through immigration fairly quckly as we chose the shorter queue & it worked , although it was a bit of a traipse to get the train to exit the terminal. We boarded the Roissy bus to The Opera House & then 3 stops on the metro to our hotel .

I don't know if we'll ever fly on an A380 again & we're so pleased that we took this opportunity. The flight, the plane, the wine & the crew were excellent

Oh yes, I bought 3 pairs of shoes over the weekend 1 pair before I'd even boarded the flight

I've loaded 11 photos, some are in the 'recent photos posted column', or the last time I looked, they are on page 8.

I would like to publicly acknowledge my grateful thanks to ianf71 for his assistance in helping me to load my photos They were all rejected as they were too big, & I'm a dimwit & didn't know how to do it.

Also, I loaded them in order but when they were uploaded they were in reverse order, so I don't know if this was me being even more dimwitted as the first photo was last & the last photo became the first

I'll post my return TR as I think it's worth posting even though we didn't return on the A380.

Thanks for the trip report. I had hoped to take one of these flights but I couldn't find a weekend to suit so it's nice to experience it second-hand

Thank you for the TR and the pics look great.

you're welcome for the assist. As you know, i'd only just worked out how to put them up myself.

Great TR - I'm taking a notepad with me next week so I don't leave anything out of mine.

Ian