Booking the Trip: Skyteam-ing it to Europe and Back
Review: Turkish Airlines Lounge Washington Dulles
Review: Etihad Airways First and Business Class Lounge Washington Dulles
Review: Air France 777-300ER Business Class Washington DC to Paris CDG
Review: Air France Business Class Lounge Terminal 2F Gate F30 (Schengen)
Review: Air France Business Class Lounge Terminal 2F Gate F50 (Schengen)
Review: Air France JOON A320-200 Business Class Paris CDG to Rome
Review: EasyJet A321Neo Economy Class Rome to London Gatwick
Trip Photos: A Brief Re-visit to Italy & London with a bit of Oxford
Review: Premier Inn London Heathrow Terminal 4
Review: SkyTeam Lounge London Heathrow
Review: KLM 737-800 Europe Business Class London Heathrow to Amsterdam
Review: KLM 747-400 World Business Class Amsterdam to Toronto
Review: United Airlines 737-800 Business Class Toronto to Chicago
Review: United Airlines 737-800 First Class Chicago to Santa Ana
YOUTUBE: Air France: Washington DC to Paris CDG
YOUTUBE: Air France JOON: Paris CDG to Rome
YOUTUBE: EasyJet: Rome to London Gatwick
YOUTUBE: KLM: London Heathrow to Amsterdam
YOUTUBE: KLM: Amsterdam to Toronto
YOUTUBE: United Airlines: Toronto to Chicago
YOUTUBE: United Airlines: Chicago to Santa Ana
Air France has two lounges in the Schengen part of CDG airport, which is terminal 2F. There’s a lounge near gate F30, and another one by gate F50. And let me tell you, they are exactly the same.
Yep, EXACTLY the same. I mean I thought no two lounges can be any different and boy was I proven wrong. If you shut the windows in both lounges and put me in one of them I wouldn’t know which one I was in. That’s how identical they were. This first one is gate F30.
You are welcomed by the standard entrance to an Air France lounge that you see practically anywhere and everywhere.
Immediately after getting boarding pass scanned, you are faced with the choice of your life. You can either turn left to go to the bathrooms and shower rooms, or right to go to the normal seating, food, and drinks area. I chose left.
This is the hallway that each door is either a shower or bathroom.
Here’s what a bathroom looked like. It was fairly well stocked.
Showers were also present and clean, but fairly basic with amenities.
Right back at where the entrance is, there’s a magazine stand as well as some airplanes on display.
Sorry for the dark pictures, the insane amount of natural light from the windows really challenged some of my shots.
At the start of the seating portion of the lounge, there were some individual seats, and then a large table where a family had sat down.
As you walk further you walk right by all the food and drinks. On the counter to the right you’ll see all the drinks the lounge has to offer.
There was a fridge with water bottles and yogurt.
Right next to that was a bunch of hard alcohol, wine in an ice chiller, and some chips.
And next to that you had non-alcoholic chilled drinks such as fruit juices and soft drinks in the fridge next to it.
Now the food was right across from the drinks so let’s have a look at that.
First, you have all sorts of tray and plates along with utensils.
Then there’s some olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Next to that was chilled foods like macaroni salad, beetroots, shrimp, etc; it was relatively healthy stuff.
Then you get to the not so healthy, but better stuff. There were 3 different pork cuts, chicken, some foie gras, pickles, cheese, and other condiments.
There were also other garnishes like croutons, wasabi, and fried garlic.
Next up there were 4 different kinds of cheeses.
And desserts to finish off the main food items available.
Honestly, I was hoping for even 1 hot food item. I was quite sad that this was all they had. There was definitely a good amount of food, and different items across the board, but all were chilled. Oh well…
There was bread at the end of the table and even that was cold and hard.
Now let’s look at the seating beyond the food. Now the lounge extends much further out but because a lot of the seating type is repetitive, I only took a couple more photos of the seats themselves.
There were about 6-7 more rows of seating that looked just like this. The nice thing was that these seats had power ports and USB ports to each of them.
Besides the standard rows of seats, there was also a corner area which had more seats and had great tarmac views.
This was my seat during my stay here.
As I was saying earlier, each seat came with USB and power port which is fantastic. Unfortunately, though, they were the European style power ports. I always carry a global adapter in hand so this wasn’t an issue for me, but something to keep in mind in case you don’t.
Ultimately I’m not mad about the ports being European only as this is a Schengen flight lounge so most travelers going between European cities are probably residing within the European Union so they would have this by default. The sole exception would be tourists and travelers from outside the EU like me.
If this were Air France’s non-Schengen lounge, then I’d probably have a bigger issue, but no problem at all in the Schengen portion.
Now from where you came from the entrance to the corner area, the lounge curves back into another section of the lounge and so essentially if you were to look at the lounge layout from above, it would look like a U or a V shape where I’m currently at the bottom of the U or the V…..if that makes sense.
There was also a magazine rack here and the same rows of seating that I showed earlier.
One of these rows on this side, however, had a TV and that was the only difference.
At the end of the lounge, there was another food and drink section and it was exactly identical to the food and drinks at the front side of the lounge so there is nothing to take photos of here.
Overall, as a lounge, it was ok. The food spread was mediocre quality, there was only one type of seating in the main lounge area, the lounge was crowded, and it took a while for the crew to clean tables. On the other hand, this lounge had power ports at every seat which is great and I was happy about.
So at the end of the day, I am glad that Air France and European airlines provide lounge access on short-haul premium cabin flights like this 2-hour one when US airlines don’t even provide lounge access on a lot of 5-hour cross-country flights for that matter.
In essence, I’m impressed at all by this lounge, but thankful that this lounge is even offered in the first place.