Air/barcelona

[Pat848]

Okay Delta has filed - what now?

I have been looking at a Delta flight for my cruise - May 2006. Our local paper (Boston) says Delta may have a price war in the next couple of months. Would I be crazy to book a flight on Delta for next year? I am looking at flights 94 and 95 out of JFK & back. These are pretty standard flights. We would have to get a shuttle from Boston to JFK. We are also going 2 days early.

GLOBALISER - are you out there? I value your opinion. I know you don't like Delta but I am not looking for service (personal). I do not eat plane food and have my own water. I am looking more at convenient times, connections & I also like being able to get 2 seats.

I have also looked at Air France flights but don't know much about them and have not heard good things about CDG.

I have flown BA before and liked them but there times - connections are not really good.

I would appreciate any guidance.

[parody]

I have also looked at Air France flights but don't know much about them and have not heard good things about CDG.

 

Three years ago I flew to Barcelona and returned from Venice and transfered at CDG both times. I also come from the Boston area and flew out of Logan. I do not see the need to go to JFK. Because they have a code share arrangement, many Delta flights in this market are actually flown on Air France aircraft. So, even if you book a flight on the Delta web page, you could be on an Air France flight or vice versa. This is particularly important at Logan as although I had an Air France flight leaving, it was actually operated by Delta and left from Terminal C and not the International Terminal. I did not find CDG to be much different than any other large airport. The only concern I might pass along is language. In the US, most announcements were in both English and French. However, in Paris, they were all in French. Fortunately, some nice local passengers alerted me to a last minute gate change announcement that I did not understand as I don't speak French.

[DEL67]

I think the advantage to Delta out of JFK is that they offer a non-stop flight to Barcelona and changing planes in JFK should be easier than CDG.

 

Delta says that they are not changing their schedule and I hope that is true for the near future (early Nov for us), but its impossible to say how the bankruptcy will impact their flight schedule by next spring. Of course schedules change even when airlines are not in bakruptcy so there are no guranatees.

[parody]

More "food for thought". BOS-JFK-BCN or BOS-CDG-BCN is still 2 air flights on each leg of the trip so that is a wash. To get a very attractive fare, I had a 5-hour layover at CDG. Normally, this would be cause for anguish! Not having been to Paris, I used the opportunity to take the rail line to downtown Paris from the airport (about 35 minutes). If anything, I started to wish that my layover was longer. However, given the number of time zones crossed, maybe 5 hours was enough to get a small taste of the area.

[Pat848]

My problem with the Air France flights that I looked at did not leave a lot of time for connecting at CDG.

I know I would have to make 1 connection and thought the easiest one was at JFK.

I also had been looking at a 10:30 flight out of Barcelona (both Delta & Air France) as from what I have heard you can not check-in at BCN until 2 hours before your flight. I know how early the cruise lines get you off the ship and I did not want to be waiting around BCN waiting to check in.

[Pat848]

How was the flights on Air France? How about leg room? Economy. Were you able to get rows with 2 seats? I guess at this point they may be where I should be looking. Thanks.

[parody]

My recollection is that the flight and seats on Air France were about average for the industry. However, the precise details likely vary by type of equipment. If you really want to know details concerning seat width, pitch, and location you may want to check out http://www.seatguru.com/ and select Air France. As I mentioned, my only concern was language at CDG, but possibly that should be expected. Having booked early, I did get a window and adjacent seat. From seatguru you can see that they typically have 2x4x2 seating.