Introduction: La Premiere In The New La Premiere

Welcome to my next trip report series, covering a recent trip I took to Paris for one night. This will be one of my shorter trip reports, since it was just a three day trip.

In this series, you can expect flight reviews of Avianca’s A320 business class, Avianca’s 787-8 business class, and Air France’s 777-300ER first class. You can expect a review of the Courtyard Charles de Gaulle Airport, plus some airport lounge reviews.

Why I took this trip

I had a very simple motivation for taking this trip — Air France recently launched its new La Premiere first class product, and the airline invited me to experience it on the inaugural flight. While I get quite a few invitations, as a policy, I pay for my own flights, and it has been around 15 years since I last accepted a media flight.

However, sometimes rules are meant to be broken, and I made an exception here. The first class cabin wasn’t even for sale to the public on the inaugural flight, and getting a first look at this product is something that I couldn’t turn down (and for those who don’t get the trip report series title, “La Premiere” is the French term for “the first”). 😉

Of course I acknowledge that the service was extra attentive on the inaugural flight, so I’ll try to judge it objectively, taking that into account, and will focus mostly on the hard product (which is stellar).

My goal was to be away from home for as little time as possible, while still getting a fun routing for the outbound, to check out some products that have been on my list. This was a pretty straightforward trip, by my standards, as I flew a total of three segments, covering 10,513 miles.

The airlines I flew on this trip

For the outbound portion of this trip, I decided to fly Avianca, as I figured I was overdue for checking up on the airline. So I flew Avianca’s Airbus A320 business class from Miami (MIA) to Bogota (BOG), and then Avianca’s Boeing 787-8 business class from Bogota (BOG) to Paris (CDG). I booked the following for 94,450 Avianca Lifemiles plus $28.50 in taxes & fees (I had transfered the points over with a transfer bonus):

4/06 AV5 Miami to Bogota departing 7:55AM arriving 10:25AM
4/06 AV228 Bogota to Paris departing 1:35PM arriving 6:45AM (+1 day)

While traveling through Bogota was a bit of a detour, a one-stop routing with a good connection length wasn’t half bad.

Then one day after arriving in Paris, I returned in Air France’s new Boeing 777-300ER La Premiere first class, which had the following schedule:

4/08 AF4 Paris to New York departing 10:30AM arriving 12:40PM

In addition to flight reviews, you can expect reviews of the following lounges:

• Avianca-TAP Lounge Miami (MIA)
• Avianca Lounge Bogota (BOG)
• Air France La Premiere Suites Paris (CDG)

The hotel I stayed at on this trip

On this trip I just had one night in Paris. I visit Paris frequently, so during this trip I decided to just stay near the airport, so that I’d have to time to work, rest, work out, etc. Last time I had a night near the airport, I stayed at the Moxy Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Since I’m always looking to review somewhere new, time around I decided to spend a night at the Courtyard Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. It had been years since I stayed at a Courtyard property, so I was looking forward to checking out this (in theory) limited service brand once again. I was pleasantly surprised!

Bottom line

I had a fun three-day avgeek adventure to Paris, including checking out Avianca’s business class experience (on the ground and in the air), and flying Air France’s new La Premiere first class. This will be one of my shorter trip report series, so stay tuned, and I hope to have this series published within the next week.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!