Air France - Not Quite as Good as Lufthansa

I'm not a big fan of trans-Atlantic flights. I love short hops, but being stuck in a seat next to even the quietest of strangers for 9 hours annoys me to no end. Probably because I'm having nicotine fits the whole time. Unfortunately, the US Ports continue to call and beg for Lars' presence there so back and forth we go quite frequently. Air France is one of the carriers we have flown with on these excursions.

My first gripe is check-in. Now, I will qualify this gripe by saying that checking in with any airline is more dependant upon which airport you happen to be flying out of. The job pool is key here. Miami International (MIA) is the worst to fly out of for any international flight, if you ask me... and you obviously are. Having said that, though, I am still going to bang Air France in general for the unreasonably long, slow lines because Lufthansa is better from that same airport. Not perfect, but better as far as check in goes. The desk folks aren't mean and hateful or anything at Air France's counters, but they are tediously lackadaisical. They really don't care that there is a line full of people.

Boarding is somewhat better than check-in. I have to say that really, getting to your seat is on par with every other airline flying out of just about anywhere in the US. In other words, slightly annoying but about as orderly as is possible given one door to board everyone through. That can also fall into MIA's lap though. At Frankfort you can board Lufthansa flights via two entrances, which makes thing ever so better... The hub for Air France, CDG, has not done this either, in my experience. Like MIA, it's the cattle call through the one door.

Where Air France gets special kudos from me is with the in-seat TVs. Each seat has its own monitor built into the back of the seat in front of you. You can choose any movie they have available and watch it pretty much at any time. That is as opposed to Lufthansa, which has the TVs in the ceiling and everyone has to watch the same movie at the same time (they are changing over though to the individuals on some planes.)