I recently did IAD-CDG on an AF A380, and was pleasantly surprised. F&B was excellent, seat was good and I had a nice sleep on the shortish flight to CDG. Even CDG was bearable on the way to ARN.
I’ve been down on AF, but may have second thoughts about doing this again.
According to my understanding, AF flies 4 generations of business class seats: 1/ Lie-flat in leather: a disaster because of the sliding effect… They don’t have many of these ones and are getting rid of 2/ Lie-flat, similar to the one above, but in a more appropriate fabric (not leather). Sliding effect is still there but to a lesser extent. Armrests are fixed, screen relatively small. I have often seen this one on board. 3/ A lie-flat, but with a better angle and a retractable armrest. They share this one with KLM (with some minor differences like the headset being fix at AF while distributed at KL). Not a bad one although I only flew it during the day so don’t know how good would be a night. Good screen of a decent size. 4/ Latest generation is the one on their website. Didn’t try it. They claim it is almost flat. Apparently B777 will be retrofitted last… :-/
They are working on the fifth generation with KLM, a seat that should be flat (a strong requirement from KLM since they don’t operate a first class) but probably not on board before 2 or 3 years.
On a side note, food out of Paris is still the best in the air, by far…
