The Last Push! The joy of check in and the AA Lounge at Paris CDG

The Last Push! The Final 700 Tier Points to BA Gold!
The joy of Check in and the American Airlines Lounge

Contents!

• Why do I do this to myself? (The introduction)
• Off to Birmingham Airport, Air France AF1656 to Paris CDG
• Ibis Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport
• A Rushed Check in, AA Lounge
• AA45 Paris CDG to New York JFK
• A Delayed Transit, AA85 New York JFK to San Francisco International
• Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport
• Intercontinental Mark Hopkins
• One Time Special – Around the Bay and Under the bridge
• Two Time Special – 3 and a half miles. Across the Golden Gate Bridge and back
• Escaping San Francisco to the Crowne Plaza
• Early Morning San Francisco Airport, AA24 San Francisco to New York JFK
• A Dash Across Manhattan and NJ, Newark Airport
• BA Galleries Lounge, EC8004 OpenSkies Newark Airport to Paris Orly West
• Paris. City of Dreams, Romance and Pickpockets?
• Eurostar 9013 Paris Gare du Nord to London St Pancras, Chiltern Railways London Marylebone to Birmingham Snow Hill
• 700TP: Job Done

Exiting the hotel, it was back into the Terminal 3 station and off to the CDGVAL

Approaching the T2 complex.

After another trip on the CDGVAL (I swear those little trains are as narrow as anything), I was back into Paris Charles De Gaulle T2, with my destination the T2C segment of this mega-terminal.

Passing the SNCF TGV station

T2C.. this way..

Thankfully the hike was a short one, and I made my way into the cavernous T2C area.

This was near the AA check-in area. Hmmm… are Aeroports d’Paris trying to say something?

The AA check in section was at Area 10, however it seemed way too quiet. That’s because the queue for security check was in the next section with no delimitation for Elites and Premium passengers.

Wonderful.

Almost at the head of the queue

Time was moving on rather rapidly, and JFK Passengers were plucked from the queue as the check-in deadline was closing in. After clearing the initial security check by ICTS, it was time to check in.

And this is where things went pop badly. A bit of pre-flight checking that four PNR’s had been issued for this flight, with tickets issued on each:

• The master Amadeus PNR (issued by Iberia)
• A PNR for the CDG-JFK segment on IB codeshare on an AA segment held by AA
• A PNR for JFK-SFO, SFO-JFK, EWR-ORY held by AA
• A PNR issued by BA for the SFO-JFK, EWR-ORY segments

So the poor check-in agents face fell looking at this ticket, and had to manually issue the boarding passes and join bookings together after getting two agents to issue the passes for my flights for today.

New luggage tags. Something to do whilst they were sorting out tickets

After checking I had no luggage to declare, I was given a fast lane access and sent on my way.

No stopping now – lets rock!

Security thankfully wasn’t that far away, and after descending into the bowels of the terminal, I cleared French Immigration, and then through to security. This exited into the duty free shop….

Oh. Tres Jolly.

With that done and dusted, and all my stuff gathered together, I headed back upstairs and into the departure lounge – and straight to the lounge.

Art

AA Lounge Paris CDG

With limited time in the lounge, I was welcomed and informed that a boarding call would be made when it was time go – giving me about 20 minutes to relax.

20 minutes is better than nothing in my book – and enough time to grab a light breakfast.

Drinks area

Breakfast selection

Fruits and Yogurt

Kitchen and Bar area

The lounge itself was a single room – but a large environment, allowing you to relax or take a stool up as needed. I went for window stool area, as it had a reasonable view of the action

Breakfast was on offer, offering a Western style breakfast

Breakfast with a view

With that done (and a little bit of spotting… well when presented with a window, it’s rude not to look out of it), I settled in for a bit. The louge itself was reasonably quiet – with the children where there in control and no disturbing the peace of the place.

The lounge whilst having no stand-out features did the job it needed to do.

Soon after,  the boarding call was made for the flight to New York.

I made my way out, and headed for Gate 37. This gate was in a satellite of the terminal, so it was a bit of a hike to get to.

Off to the Satellite

Thankfully upon arrival into the satellite, the AA boarding area and queue were pretty visible. As such, I queued up… and was pulled out of the queue by a worker who spotted I had a business class boarding pass.

My boarding pass was scanned, and I was allowed to head down the jetway to the waiting 767-300ER…

NEXT: AA45 to New York JFK…. Are you sure you don’t want a sundae? It’s the best part of the meal! 

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