5 airports, 4 planes. 24 hours
It's end of the year! And rightly so I have planned to get home for Christmas as I wanna spend Christmas and New Year with my loved ones and friends. It all begin with a simple MSN beep from Chris - who is another frequent flyer forum freak at Flyertalk.com. Flyertalk is a forum of many frequent flyer enthusiasts, who gather and share their thoughts of mileage run, and anything about airliners. It has proved to be a great site. So one fine day back in June this year, there was a mistake fare on the Lufthansa website, and Flyertalk was obviously buzzing with posts regarding this mistake. Some Paris CDG - Singapore SIN were going for £269 all in. Apparently it was supposed to be £2690 but the zero was missing, and apparently these are very common mistakes (gasp!). It was a deal that I couldn't resist because simply it's fully refundable and secondly, it acrues full mileage, plus qualifying miles! I decided to grab this as this would be great for my *A Gold qualifications (a whole whopping 13k miles!). In a jiffy, I was booked on Lufthansa flight from CDG-SIN for Christmas period. The fare was corrected the next working day.
First leg: LHR-CDG
Flight Operated by: BMI Regional
Aircraft Type: Embraer RJ145
Flight time: 55 minutes
Fare: £99
Date: 23 Dec 2006 Dep: 1050 Arr 1305
The fog situation was a prime concern few days before my scheduled flight. As you know, flights were delayed greatly due to low visibility at the LHR airport. The fact that it operates on only 2 runway adds more complications. For days I have prayed for a good sunny day on that Saturday and my prayers were answered when fog were lifted. I also considered myself very lucky, coz had I booked on BA for my flight to CDG, it would've been cancelled. BA was actually offering cheaper rate, but I chose BMI because they are part of *A. Thank God for BMI for still running their service. I was quite excited to find out that I was going to fly on an Embraer R145. It looks like your own personal jet, but of course it doesn't feel like one coz it's all cramped up inside. I just wanted to experience flying on this jet as it's the smallest one so far. The liftup was really quick and in no time we were in the air. Nothing much to comment about the service, as it's a straight forward short-haul hop. Loved the aircraft though!
Paris CDG - more like DOG
We arrived Paris CDG 5 minutes before scheduled arrival time. Upon arrival, I was the last one to leave. I just wanted to take pictures of the cabin because I really did fall in love with it. And the FA was more than glad to post for me. Teehee.
I haven't been to many airports, but CDG can be considered as one of the worst airport I have been to so far. Upon disembarkment, we were lead into this retro-looking tunnel to the main satelite terminal. At first glance it looks quite cool, because of the unfinished look, but after a while it gets a bit boring. Enter the terminal, and you instantly feel rather depressing. The low lights at the terminals just makes me felt tired! And then the confusion starts. Signs were not clearly stated, and there were no transit counters or anything. I know Changi has it so I thought it's a common thing, but I guess I was wrong. So I decided to pass through immigration. And then I was met with this quite a cool-looking escalator. I followed the exit sign and finally managed to exit. It's funny how they decided to divert the exit into a small lane, kinda like heading to the toilet! So I didn't know if I was heading the right direction.
Since I had like 6 full hours to burn, I started looking for activities to burn time. There weren't many choices really, so I decided to go for a proper sit down restaurant. After spending a good hour gobbling down food, I thought of going shopping. Urgh...I just don't believe how limited the selection of shops. Actually there werent' ANY retail shops that interests me slightly. God, 4 hours and nothing to do. I then started powering up my laptop, and hope that there is wireless network. There were WIFI logo eveywhere so I thought, surely there is. And yes there were, but would require some payment, which I was more than willing to pay. Then to my horror, it didnt let me sign up. Somehow I must enter a France address as my billing address. WTF! At that time, I was really pissed. CDG is officially DOG. By that time, my mood has gone really bad, and was tired out by then. I would rather spend 20 hours in Changi than 2 hours here!
Fast forward boarding time. I don't understand what sort of boarding system they have. All 3-4 boarding gates were grouped together. And they only check your boarding pass only when you board, as opposed to other usual airports procedure where they check your boarding passes upon entering the boarding gates. I just don't get it. From that onwards, I wasn't in the mood to take any pics any more. I just wanted it to be OVER.
Next-up: Fabulous FRANKFURT
It's end of the year! And rightly so I have planned to get home for Christmas as I wanna spend Christmas and New Year with my loved ones and friends. It all begin with a simple MSN beep from Chris - who is another frequent flyer forum freak at Flyertalk.com. Flyertalk is a forum of many frequent flyer enthusiasts, who gather and share their thoughts of mileage run, and anything about airliners. It has proved to be a great site. So one fine day back in June this year, there was a mistake fare on the Lufthansa website, and Flyertalk was obviously buzzing with posts regarding this mistake. Some Paris CDG - Singapore SIN were going for £269 all in. Apparently it was supposed to be £2690 but the zero was missing, and apparently these are very common mistakes (gasp!). It was a deal that I couldn't resist because simply it's fully refundable and secondly, it acrues full mileage, plus qualifying miles! I decided to grab this as this would be great for my *A Gold qualifications (a whole whopping 13k miles!). In a jiffy, I was booked on Lufthansa flight from CDG-SIN for Christmas period. The fare was corrected the next working day.
First leg: LHR-CDG
Flight Operated by: BMI Regional
Aircraft Type: Embraer RJ145
Flight time: 55 minutes
Fare: £99
Date: 23 Dec 2006 Dep: 1050 Arr 1305
The fog situation was a prime concern few days before my scheduled flight. As you know, flights were delayed greatly due to low visibility at the LHR airport. The fact that it operates on only 2 runway adds more complications. For days I have prayed for a good sunny day on that Saturday and my prayers were answered when fog were lifted. I also considered myself very lucky, coz had I booked on BA for my flight to CDG, it would've been cancelled. BA was actually offering cheaper rate, but I chose BMI because they are part of *A. Thank God for BMI for still running their service. I was quite excited to find out that I was going to fly on an Embraer R145. It looks like your own personal jet, but of course it doesn't feel like one coz it's all cramped up inside. I just wanted to experience flying on this jet as it's the smallest one so far. The liftup was really quick and in no time we were in the air. Nothing much to comment about the service, as it's a straight forward short-haul hop. Loved the aircraft though!
Paris CDG - more like DOG
We arrived Paris CDG 5 minutes before scheduled arrival time. Upon arrival, I was the last one to leave. I just wanted to take pictures of the cabin because I really did fall in love with it. And the FA was more than glad to post for me. Teehee.
I haven't been to many airports, but CDG can be considered as one of the worst airport I have been to so far. Upon disembarkment, we were lead into this retro-looking tunnel to the main satelite terminal. At first glance it looks quite cool, because of the unfinished look, but after a while it gets a bit boring. Enter the terminal, and you instantly feel rather depressing. The low lights at the terminals just makes me felt tired! And then the confusion starts. Signs were not clearly stated, and there were no transit counters or anything. I know Changi has it so I thought it's a common thing, but I guess I was wrong. So I decided to pass through immigration. And then I was met with this quite a cool-looking escalator. I followed the exit sign and finally managed to exit. It's funny how they decided to divert the exit into a small lane, kinda like heading to the toilet! So I didn't know if I was heading the right direction.
Since I had like 6 full hours to burn, I started looking for activities to burn time. There weren't many choices really, so I decided to go for a proper sit down restaurant. After spending a good hour gobbling down food, I thought of going shopping. Urgh...I just don't believe how limited the selection of shops. Actually there werent' ANY retail shops that interests me slightly. God, 4 hours and nothing to do. I then started powering up my laptop, and hope that there is wireless network. There were WIFI logo eveywhere so I thought, surely there is. And yes there were, but would require some payment, which I was more than willing to pay. Then to my horror, it didnt let me sign up. Somehow I must enter a France address as my billing address. WTF! At that time, I was really pissed. CDG is officially DOG. By that time, my mood has gone really bad, and was tired out by then. I would rather spend 20 hours in Changi than 2 hours here!
Fast forward boarding time. I don't understand what sort of boarding system they have. All 3-4 boarding gates were grouped together. And they only check your boarding pass only when you board, as opposed to other usual airports procedure where they check your boarding passes upon entering the boarding gates. I just don't get it. From that onwards, I wasn't in the mood to take any pics any more. I just wanted it to be OVER.
Next-up: Fabulous FRANKFURT
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