SEA-CDG Air France Direct Flight; Anyone Done It?

Steve... give me a few weeks and I'll let you know. :)

I have a friend who did this leg a few weeks ago. He said it wasn't bad because he slept for 7 hours! I hope I can do the same!

Also, watch what airline you take from CDG to Italy... we are on a Alitalia flight and I am not happy about that.

Heath,
That's something we're looking into right now. Unfortunately the most reasonable layovers contain an Alitalia leg. I just don't trust them whether their the first leg or second of my trip. I can so SEA-CDG-FCO with a 2h15m layover in CDG and stay all Air France. It should be doable, but I'd rather see it around 3 hours. Unfortunately the 3h45m layover is an Alitalia flight to FCO - no go.
It's the same on the way back. I could get a little more layover, but it's Alitalia to CDG. If we were to throw Florence into the mix instead of either FCO or VCE, we'd be looking at City Jet for the short leg.
The other thing is that Kayak is giving us $900 flights via Air France, but when I go to their site they're pricing up differently. I prefer booking direct with the airline in case I need to contact them about the booking for some reason.

Hi Steve,
That's a really good idea about booking directly. We are going from SEA to CDG, direct flight in October via Air France. The catch is that I had booked on Delta and it was just a fluke that I discovered that we are actually flying Air France. I had specified our seats on the Delta site, but for whatever reason, it didn't stick, so I called Delta (I had booked in June and this was just last week that I discovered it all) and of course they didn't have the seats I had wanted, called Air France and since I had booked Delta they couldn't help me. So, long story short, it is always best to book directly (of course, I thought I had, LOL)
Good luck,
Cathie

By the time you fly Alitalia, they may actually be Air France. Air France/KLM is one of the two groups (the other is Lufthansa, I think), so you might get your wish anyways.

See this article from the financial times for more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a52e39ec-6473-11dc-90ea-0000779fd2ac.html

i took the flight in april/may and it was pretty good. seattle->detroit->cdg on NW, just about the same as you'd expect on any other overseas flight.

In June Air France started a direct flight from Seattle to Paris. That's the one I'm interested in. The one thing I did notice is that the flights in November are taking off around 2:00PM instead of around 5:00PM. This means that arrival time in CDG is about midnight Seattle time as opposed to early the next morning. Personally I prefer the overnight aspect for a 10 hour flight. But with this length of trip the internal clock gets pretty upside down anyhow.

David,
As long as Alitalia is still flying, I'll be happy! I just booked our flight for November. We had to make some adjustments to get the fares close to reasonable. But the only thing we could do on the flight from SEA-FCO was to take an Alitalia flight from CDG to FCO. The only way to stay on Air France would be to lay over for 7 hours in CDG.
I was hoping to carry on since Air France has a 12kg (26lb) in cabin weight limit, which I should easily be under. But Alitalia has the 5kg (11lb) limit from what I found. The hope would be that I could gate-check my bag in that case.
We're flying out of Verona instead of Venice too. It's cheaper and we won't have to spend 100EU on a water taxi for a 7AM flight. A train ride to Verona is about 12EU each and we can spend a day/night there before departure. But that trip is on "Regional" airline to CDG. I don't know anything about that leg in regards to baggage. But we'll be on our way home at that point.

Just to update, now that we're home. The flight was good and the small delays were pretty much made up for in the air. The flight attendants were fine. The half-empty Tuesday departure was great if we had wanted to stretch out in a 4-seat row, although we didn't. The flight home, on a Saturday, was packed though. The entertainment worked well, although they had the same movie choices in both directions which makes it tough if you watch 2 or 3 per direction. You sort of run out of what really interests you for the second flight. The only downside we found was the food. It wasn't that good. Our only comparison is the SEA-LHR flight on British Airways which had better food.
Our layover from Verona to Paris was 1h30m, and we used just over an hour in what I would call an almost flawless terminal change that included two stops at the bathroom. Any 'issues' and it would have been a bit tight. I wouldn't book any less of a layover that includes terminals 2E and 2F.