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.
In this post:
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, “Le Premier” and “La Premiere” are the French terms 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!
We'll see how this compares to SFO777's reporting. He seems to be a bit more of a wine and spirits expert than you (opinion based on many of your excellent reports).
I think I said this on your live blog post, but I do appreciate you accepting the media flight for this one.
I am sure this is a wonderful product, but visually, I think the older product looks more elegant. This version seems to be cramming a lot into one space. That said, I would love to try it :-)
From the photos, those curtains look uncomfortably close to the head rest
I think I would have respected your new LP review more if it was self-funded or even crowdfunded.
This site was one of the last bastions of not kowtowing to corporate interests.
@Ben, do you ever get weird looks or responses from airport or airline people when they see you on some apparently random routing? I can't imagine that Avianca gets many people flying from Miami to Bogotá just to connect to Paris on the same day.
@ jallan -- It's surprisingly rare for anyone to comment on it. I think Avianca actually has a not-insignificant amount of US to Europe via Bogota traffic, as the airline often has the lowest fares in cash.
@Ben - That is extremely surprising to me, and the question that @jallan asked is something I've wondered about your experience as well.
In my experience, everytime I take even a slightly indirect or unusual routing, I always get scrutinized for it. I just flew to Paris by flying Norse and then Air France through London. I am eligible for the e-gates, but I was directed to see an officer because there was an issue...
@Ben - That is extremely surprising to me, and the question that @jallan asked is something I've wondered about your experience as well.
In my experience, everytime I take even a slightly indirect or unusual routing, I always get scrutinized for it. I just flew to Paris by flying Norse and then Air France through London. I am eligible for the e-gates, but I was directed to see an officer because there was an issue with scanning my passport. The immigration officer became suspicious of my routing. He then scrutinized every page of my passport.
I flew to Montreal for a day last October as a US Citizen. I almost got deported on entry because of how small my stay was. Ultimately I had to sit down with an immigration officer in a private room before they let me in. And these are just some of my stories...
Maybe you look suspicious :-)
Admittedly it's been a couple of decades since my high school French, but I believe (unless you're revealing something about your gender identity... ;) ) it should be "Le Premier in La Première", since La Première is the feminine form (La Classe Première).
He's probably referring to the "first time" (la fois) in the new la première.
@ Levi @ hbilbao -- Hah, wait, I'm embarrassed to get this wrong. So if I'm trying to say "the first in the new first," or something along those lines, am I right, or no? If I'm wrong, I'd rather correct it now rather than later.
Lol, I thought your title was, literally, "the first (time) in the new la première." I'll defer this to a native French speaker.
Le premier fois dans La Premiere.
Argh autocorrect: La premiere fois fans La Premiere.
Argh autocorrect: it should read La premiere fois…
It should be Le premier indeed since you are a man, so it's Le premier dans la première
@Ben - as a French I'd then suggest "Première fois avec La Première" (first time with La Première). And please don't forget the accent :-)
Or, closer to what you came up with: "La Première fois in the New La Première"
I only intend on flying Global from now on, so La Premiere seems a bit dated to me
Ben, if I may, in French, La Première is spelled with an accent :-)
"... it has been around 15 since..."
Days? Months? ;)
@ Lukas -- Whoops, good catch! That should've read "minutes." Just kidding... years.
15 minutes? Did Global reach out to you Ben ;)
Maybe it was Ryanair offering Ben a free one-way flight to CAI.