Amelia is a Real Airline, and More From My Air France Flights Home From Europe (Trip Report)

Though I was ready to come home from our European adventure, I was not looking forward to our flights. We had several places we could have returned from, but Prague by far required the fewest points. The problem was that we had to fly in the evening from Prague to Paris, stay overnight, and then fly home on the early flight the next morning to LA. It wasn’t perfect, but it was absolutely worth it for the 50,000 miles per adult in business. We were staying with a friend in Prague, so it’s not like we had to worry about a late checkout there.

As we got closer to travel, Air France let us know that it was now going to outsource this flight to a company called Amelia. Amelia is French-ish. I mean, the parent company is French, but it uses a Slovenian operating certificate to fly under the Air France brand — along with some of its own branded flying too on small routes. That doesn’t sound shady at all. I tried to use this operating airline change to switch us to a same day connection home, but Air France told me to pound sand. It was going to be an adventure.

Leading up to travel, I started to get nervous. Amelia’s performance was not good. In July, its two entities (8R and NL) ran fewer than half their flights on time under the Air France brand. We had that overnight layover in Paris, so there was plenty of buffer, but the last thing anyone wants is a really short overnight stay.

On the day we flew, I was watching the airplane — which had been downgauged from an A320 to one of its two A319s — as it slipped behind schedule. It was late getting back to Paris from Marseille, so it was about half an hour late getting out to Prague. That wouldn’t have bugged me too much except that the day before it was on the same schedule and took forever to turn out of Prague.

We got to the airport’s Terminal 2 around 6:30pm, and it was pretty quiet. We checked in at the modern terminal using a kiosk and got boarding passes with both flights on a single page.

Security was easy and efficient, and we just had a bit of a walk to get past the D gates over to C2 where we were expecting to depart even though it hadn’t been posted.

We had time to kill, so we wandered around stores, and I enjoyed the exotic spotting. First, it was the awkwardly-named Fanhansa aircraft.

Then, I caught a glimpse of the increasingly-rare Czech Airlines.

Smartwings had several aircraft that were Sunwing airplanes from Canada.

Those fly in the Sunwing network during winter, but they actually send their pilots and planes out to Prague for summer. I spoke with a couple of pilots waiting for their flight, and they said it wasn’t a bad gig, but it had gone pretty junior this year. I guess most people would rather stay in Canada in summer.

Our airplane arrived late as expected, and people got off relatively quickly.

Then, people started lining up to board. Since we were in business, we got in a strangely long line for zone 1 boarding.

It turns out, these were just gate lice. When they called for zone 1 boarding, these people just stood there, waiting for their turn. We walked around them and headed down the jet bridge until we saw this:

Yeah, the door was closed halfway down. Apparently there was no coordination between the gate agent and the crew onboard, because that door stayed closed for several minutes until the flight attendants opened it up and let us onboard.

Air France 1083 (operated by Amelia)
August 15, 2024

Amelia has 144 seats on its A319s, and in our case, the first four rows were blocked off for business class. They had different color antimacassars and the seats did look nice from afar.

But this airplane’s age was showing. It still had a tv screen at the front which stayed dark, but there were also ancient entertainment controls in the battered armrest.

This was a traditional eurobiz-style cabin where business seats are the same as coach, but the middle stays empty. They left the antimacassar off the middle here as well to give a visual cue.

The crews were friendly, and we pushed back without losing too much time on the turn. It isn’t a long taxi from the C gates to the runway, so we were heading into the fading light relatively quickly. The pilot said it would be a nice, smooth ride, and he was right until we get somewhere near cruise.

Out of nowhere, we hit some moderate bumps and the seatbelt sign came on. The pilots accelerated the climb and we were through it in short order. The flight attendants came through with cold towels, and then they started serving dinner. I was not hungry at all, but I had my wife take a photo of the meal.

It said it was smoked trout, but it was most definitely smoked salmon. She said it was ok. My kids wouldn’t touch it.

We chased the sun all the way toward Paris. Our descent was straight in from the east which meant we had an impressively short flying time. I’m fairly certain we spent about half as much time taxiing in Paris as we did in the air.

Once we parked in Terminal 2F, we had to wind our way to the train to take us to the mythical Terminal 3. This glorified train station is more a hub for hotels than for airplanes, and we walked right into our clean if not overly impressive Novotel for what would be an 8-hour stay.

The alarm hit hard at 6am, but we knew we had to get going as the sun was rising.

We showered, hopped back on the train, and then I screwed up. I mistakenly had us walk over to Terminal 2F even though US flights leave from Terminal 2E. Once in 2F, I realized my mistake, and an agent said the best thing to do was go downstairs, head outside, and walk through the car rental parking lots. This felt like a new Olympic sport as we dodged barriers and cars, but we did indeed make it into the very busy terminal.

We had already been checked in from the night before — and we had no bags checked — so we went right over to the immigration line. The lineminder said we had to weigh our carry-on bags. Why? I have no idea. But we went over there, and the person who was doing the weighing looked at our business class boarding passes, and just told us to get back in the regular line.

We exited the country quickly. Then we followed the signs to Sky Priority, but the person there said we were in the wrong place. That, of course, was only for people in Terminal 2E – K. Silly me. We needed to take the tram to Terminal 2E – M so that we could then go through security over there.

Once we finally passed through that gauntlet, we grabbed a couple things in duty free and then still had a little time in the lounge.

Air France’s lounge is quite nice and exceedingly large. Maybe it was just the early morning hour that kept it from being too crowded, but there was plenty of space with a wonderful glass wall with a heck of a view toward the east.

In general, I’m a fan of Dutch influence on Air France-KLM, but there is one exception…

Once our flight started boarding, we slowly headed over to the gate where passports were checked, and boarding passes were scanned. We then hopped on board through door 2L.

Air France 20
August 16, 2024

This airplane was the same vintage as our flight out, and the seats were equally scuffed and worn. But they were comfortable once again. This time, we were in row 6, and it was right in front of the galley. This was never an issue.

We were greeted warmly, and pre-departure beverages were served along with menus. The captain came on with a jovial announcement saying that it would be a nice flight, but we were going to be a little late due to fueling delays. Let’s forget that the airplane had been sitting there for over 24 hours since its last flight in from Dubai. French efficiency at its best.

He did say we’d only be about 10 minutes late, but we’d make it up in the air. It turns out we were 25 minutes late, and we only made up some of that.

After pushback, it was a lengthy and winding taxi to get to the north runways. That airport is really just something else. We were finally airborne, and I was hoping to get a nice glimpse of Paris, but it wasn’t to be. There was a low cloud deck the enveloped us shortly after departure.

Once above it, it was a beautiful day to fly. The seatbelt sign was turned off and never came back on until our descent.

The flight attendants came through with hot towels, and I had begun searching for movies. I apparently had a tennis theme going on, because I watched the awful Challengers — I don’t care what the reviews say — and the great Battle of the Sexes. It was relatively slim pickings with many subtitled options that just really didn’t appeal to me since I wanted to rest my eyes.

They served lunch shortly after takeoff, which always seems backwards to me. That first meal should be light, and people should be sleeping. But I must admit that the shrimp with orange and honey vinaigrette appetizer was delicious.

I again had the cod, but this time with Noilly Prat sauce and artichoke which was better than the cod on the way out.

I skipped dessert and tried to sleep. I don’t feel like I slept much, but I clearly slept some because at one point I woke up and my window shades had been closed for me.

As the flight wore on, I was getting more tired, but I just couldn’t sleep again. So I kept binging on movies. Once it hit 8am LA time, I decided it was time to officially wake up. I flipped open my window shade and had some hot tea. I then watched another movie — One Life with Anthony Hopkins — which I really enjoyed since we had learned about this during our Prague visit.

The crew had set up the usual self-service bar in the mid-galley, and I took advantage of it to refill my water since they weren’t regularly coming through. This time, they also had little finger sandwiches available that they would heat up when requested.

Eventually, they came by with “dinner” which they described as “chicken or pasta.” I bet on what turned out to be roast chicken fillet with tarragon jus, and it wasn’t awful. Air France does food well.

I started getting desperate, so I watched a couple episodes of The Big Bang Theory, and then mercifully it was time to descend. We had a nice and slow glide into the LA area on a smoggy, summer day.

Air France being in the midfield concourse may be far from a lot of things, but it does make for a quick taxi to the gate upon landing. They had us get off at door 1L, and then it was a maze of up and down escalators along with moving walkways to get us to immigration.

The kids still don’t have Global Entry — they will when it’s free come October — so we waited in a short regular line. There was nobody working at customs — at least not visibly — so we sailed right through and got an Uber Black so we wouldn’t have to deal with the LAXit mess. Incredibly, we were back home just about an hour after our airplane parked at the gate.

Overall, the flights went very well. Just some general observations:

• I enjoyed Air France, even in the last generation business class
• I don’t care about lounges, but I thought both of the ones we visited were quite nice
• The 777-300ER is just a great airplane regardless of soft product, it’s peak Boeing
• CDG sucks