Packetfury.net

The last few weeks have been spend on flights, a lot of them. Two trips to the USA, two trips to Brazil, and I'm the happy owner of an Air France FlyingBlue silver card. I probably would have had gold status, but my company decided to send me on other carriers too.

Flying has almost always been a pleasure for me, but one day things changed. One flight didn't take off. Anyway, long story, I still trust these metal birds, but my flight to Brazil brought up some interesting conversations. The Paris -> Sao Paulo flight is rather long; it isn't the longest flight that I've had, but we are still talking close to 12 hours. The second flight was a day flight, but the windows were closed, and the few passengers that the flight had were ready to sleep their way to Sao Paulo. The skies were calm, and the flight went very well. This time, I was all alone on my three seats, and being on an emergency exit on a 777-300, I was almost right on the galley. I got up to stretch my legs, and ended up chatting 3 hours with the flight attendant. We had some interesting things to talk about; mainly about her job, and what it meant to her to fly. She loved her job, but ever since AF447, she had lost confidence on the Brazilian routes. Turbulence that would at first have rocked her to sleep on her off hours now scared her more than anything, and even if AF447 crashed two years ago, it is always fresh in their mind. No-one yet knows what happened, and AF447 has only been found recently (at time of writing) and the black boxes have just been brought up from the depths of the ocean. It will still take some time, but until then, and probably afterwards, all the crew that I have met know full well that they do not rule the skies, and that the skies can sometimes be very, very unfriendly.

The return flight was different; my travel agency doesn't seem to like me, and they gave me tickets in which I had only one hours correspondence at Charles de Gaulle; one hour to clear customs, cross over three terminals and catch my flight to Nantes. The flight from Sao Paulo was 40 minutes late. I had everything planned; I was at the very front of the economy cabin (my company doesn't like me either). The A330 was a 2-4-2 configuration, and I was on the right hand side in an aisle seat, ready to jump off and run through the airport. The lady next to me had a child with her, and had a crib reserved, so right in front of me. The child seemed calm, so I wasn't really expecting the flight to be bad, but still slightly more difficult. When the flight attendant came with the crib, she asked how much the child weighed, to which the answer was 11 kilogrammes. Things became difficult, since the crib and the support were designed for ten kilogrammes maximum, so she was "stuck", with the child on her lap for close to 12 hours. I already knew that I was going to miss the Nantes flight, so I asked the attendant if there were any seats free behind, even if that meant getting stuck between two people, or right in the very back. She thanked me for asking, but informed me that there were no seats available. The second hostess said that there were, not necessarily behind us, but in front of us. Sir, please follow me, we have a seat available for you in business class. Now that was a nice flight! Very, very bumpy, but a nice flight. No-one really slept on that flight, even though the return was a night flight, but at least the seat was great, the meal was too, and even if I had taken 4 long hauls that month and I had seen every single film, it was still great. The service was the best part of the flight, and I really do enjoy flying with Air France. Talking of which, I wonder if they got my letter?