No mention of which class of cabin you will be flying, however, here's a few things you'll notice no matter which cabin you'll be travelling in upstairs:

- Just how quiet it is on-board (especially so upstairs).

- The sidewall stowage bins permitting easy access to your personal effects, plus leaving more space free for your feet under the seat in front.

- Better seating arrangement when travelling with your significant other.
Due to the taper of the fuselage, Y and W class have pairs of seats, rather than the more typical 3-across. Cabins also feel less crowded.

- Depending on the crew, it can get rather warm on the upper deck on overnight flights.
Seems that a combination of some crews cranking up the temperature to help pax doze off and physics (hot air rises) means that it can get a little uncomfortable. I take a change of clothes for a cooler sleep experience.

- Occurred only once during departure on a windy day. Sat at the very back of the upper deck, I felt a lot of sway and lateral movement within the airframe. A little disconcerting as I hadn't suffered that on any aircraft before. Good news is, after about 15 minutes or so, never experienced it on the same flight or any other A380 again.

It's not the prettiest aeroplane to look at, but it is the one that gives me the best pax experience.
 

It's a great passenger experience on the A380.  Very quiet and comfortable.  Not sure about the Air France configuration but with Emirates it's excellent.

The AF A380 I was on during my trip back home from France last year was a heck of a lot quieter than the the KLM 777 that took me there.

I enjoyed my first and only flight in a A380 so far,

was from Zürich to Bangkok with stopover at Dubai and same tour back.

Very quiet Airplane.

Below i was visiting Zürich Airport on 16. February, just seightseeing and we were lucky to see an a380 start.

Airbus 380 departure from Zürich a few days ago

Edited February 29, 20206 yr by Nedo68

Thanks for all the feedback. 

Looks like it will be an enjoyable aircraft to travel on provided I don’t get an equipment change between now and then.

Ordinary face mask don't help, unless they are FPP3 face masks.

They help though to lower the spreading of the disease if worn by someone who's already infected (even if he has no symptoms and is even unaware of being infected).

From what this virus is shaping to be, it will probably be very important to slow down the spreading so to have a much gentler peak, because it imposes a heavier burden on the healthcare system (ICUs particularly) compared to ordinary flu, and a rapid peak would overwhelm available healthcare resources.

For the above reason, I would not be surprised if in the near future governments will try to make everybody wear masks in public, until the peak is over.

 

9 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Hoping this virus is under control by time of your trip.

Cheers, Rob

I’m not worried about it since it’s not until Dec. Hopefully by then the whole mess would be straightened out. If not, I’ll just have to rebook and go another time.

8 hours ago, Murmur said:

Ordinary face mask don't help, unless they are FPP3 face masks.

They help though to lower the spreading of the disease if worn by someone who's already infected (even if he has no symptoms and is even unaware of being infected).

From what this virus is shaping to be, it will probably be very important to slow down the spreading so to have a much gentler peak, because it imposes a heavier burden on the healthcare system (ICUs particularly) compared to ordinary flu, and a rapid peak would overwhelm available healthcare resources.

For the above reason, I would not be surprised if in the near future governments will try to make everybody wear masks in public, until the peak is over.

 

not  going  to help  with  user  that are  infected  touching  surfaces   and  then  other  people  than   touch  them,  think  the  virus  is  alive  for  more  than  48  hours  on  surfaces  that  are  touched  by infected  people 

Will be interesting to hear what you thought about the flight. My mum just came back on an Air France A380 from Johannesburg to Paris (outwards to Cape Town it was a 777). She and her fella had Premium Economy seats, and had to be reseated twice. In the original seats the footrest wouldn't work, and on the second attempt there was no on board entertainment available. All in all both mentioned how tired the interior of the plane looked... But - yes, they both (in their 70s and veeeeeery experienced travellers) were also pleasantly surprised by how quiet it was.

 

Remided me of a Lufthansa 747 to Beijing I once took a couple of years ago, where the back of my seat actually collapsed onto the passenger behind me as I tried to recline it (one of the stewards then wedged it upright and I was reseated). And one of the overhead bins kept dropping open... Somehow not really what a flag carrier is supposed to represent, is it? 😉

 

Cheers

 

Mallard

5 hours ago, pete_auau said:

not  going  to help  with  user  that are  infected  touching  surfaces   and  then  other  people  than   touch  them,  think  the  virus  is  alive  for  more  than  48  hours  on  surfaces  that  are  touched  by infected  people 

The aim is to lower R0 (infection rate) below 1, and everything is gonna help for that: face masks, hands igienizers, limiting people reassembrements etc. Of course basic hygiene rules like avoiding touching face before washing hands, but face masks WILL contribute to lower R0, although not enough by itself. The amount of time the virus remains alive on surfaces is still unclear at the moment.

10 hours ago, Mallard said:

 In the original seats the footrest wouldn't work, and on the second attempt there was no on board entertainment available. All in all both mentioned how tired the interior of the plane looked... But - yes, they both (in their 70s and veeeeeery experienced travellers) were also pleasantly surprised by how quiet it was.

 

Remided me of a Lufthansa 747 to Beijing I once took a couple of years ago, where the back of my seat actually collapsed onto the passenger behind me as I tried to recline it (one of the stewards then wedged it upright and I was reseated). And one of the overhead bins kept dropping open... Somehow not really what a flag carrier is supposed to represent, is it? 😉

 

Cheers

 

Mallard

This kind of reminds me of a few years ago. My wife and I had booked our trip in March from Newark to Barcelona on a Norwegian 787 for the Christmas holiday. 

Sometime in the middle of the year, maybe July, I get a text notification from Norwegian that they had to change our flight to another carrier called Privilege Style due to them having to pull the 787s from service. I googled Privilege Style and it looked ok and read that they do a lot of charter work for European football teams.

Fast forward to the day of the flight. We arrive at Newark and go to the gate. I see the plane parked outside and was a 777, so I’m thinking ok, this should be ok, plane looks good and 777s I’ve flown on have been fairly nice.

Then the pack of 6 or so flight attendants show up, dressed to the nines, looking like models, with uniforms that reminded me of Catch Me If You Can. My eyes were almost popping out of my head and my wife was almost laughing at my reaction. I’m thinking, you know, this Privilege Style airline might be pretty good.

Well that was basically the only highlight. Once we boarded the plane it was well used to put it mildly. Seats were worn out, had pink and purple upholstery, seatback entertainment screens weren’t working, etc. The service was good and the ladies were extremely attractive and well dressed but the food and plane was horrible. We had to take the same airline, plane and crew on the way home as well.

After that trip, about 3 weeks later, Norwegian put the 787s back in service but we were hesitant to ever use that airline again in case of an equipment change and we ended up on Privilege Style. At least we got to and from the destination in one piece but I would never fly them again if I had a choice.

Well that didn’t last long. My wife logged on to the AirFrance website today to check something and saw a notice that the equipment has already been changed and is no longer an A380 but a 777 and the seats we paid extra for to pick has been reassigned to seats that would have been free in the first place.

What a disappointment and they didn’t even send out an email notification, so we wouldn’t have even know to check our new seat assignments to make sure we were seated where we want and together. We paid around $180 extra to pick the seats on the A380 and now we have to either call or email to find out about getting a refund on that charge.

I had a feeling something like that was going to happen and is always a danger when you book a trip so far out in advance. I feel like I need to log onto the site at least once a week to make sure they don’t keep changing our seats and/or equipment again.

That's a shame! But what with this virus thing, especially here in relation to innereuropean flights, quite a number have been cancelled or smaller planes are being used. Probably the same with the transatlantic connections. A sudden drop in passenger numbers means that a 380 just isn't the right plane for that route at the moment...

Cheers

 

Mallard

14 hours ago, Mallard said:

That's a shame! But what with this virus thing, especially here in relation to innereuropean flights, quite a number have been cancelled or smaller planes are being used. Probably the same with the transatlantic connections. A sudden drop in passenger numbers means that a 380 just isn't the right plane for that route at the moment...

Cheers

 

Mallard

Could be the case but since Dec is a long way away, I’m surprised they changed the equipment already. It’ll be just my luck they change it back to the 380 and my seats get messed up again.