Air France vs Malaysia Airlines - A traveller's observation

Last week, I had the chance to visit Rio de Janeiro on a working trip. Rio is indeed considered as an 'exotic' destination for ordinary Malaysian like me. However, the journey was a killer. The fastest way to reach there is to take a trip to Paris on a MAS flight, wait four hours to catch a Air France flight to Rio. All in all is a 28 hour ordeal.

Anyway, I will run something on Rio separately. For now, I just want to pen down my observations on the key differences in approach between Air France and MAS. It seems they have taken a different emphasis on what air travel experience should be.

ENTERTAINMENT

MAS is superior in this area. Typical of Asian airlines, passengers are overwhelmed with choices of games and movies. Movies can be categorised into new ones, old favourites, movies from other asian languages and on and on. In addition, you get the wonderful 'jukebox' feature on top of the traditional music available. Jukebox feature allows you to choose the songs u like from different albums and put in one set.

On the other hand, all Air France offered are movies restricted to 8 in numbers and music is 'totally French' only !

SEATS

Both airlines are fairly comparable although MAS has slight advantage over space especially in the legroom area.

FOOD

Both airlines have their own strengths, with each national airline offering their best local food. MAS has their Satay to boast about, while the French paraded their traditional 3 course French meal combined with choice of wines selected by supposedly the World's Best Sommelier in the year 2000. Qualitywise, both are comparable.

The only fine difference is MAS offers both Western and Asian varieties to cater to the diverse taste of its passengers, whereas the proud French will only offer one choice ie French cuisine and thats it (somehow I think this is so 'French')

AIR CREW SERVICES

MAS being a typical Asian airline generally is OK in this area. However, I am also pleasantly surprised by the level of service of the Air France crew, they are just as good as the MAS ones; friendly, clinical and precise.

ONE LAST POINT

This is the first time I come across in many times of air travel, Air France actually have camera probably at the pilot's cockpit where u can see the pilot's view in your personal TV screen. I tried to capture a pic (see below) but was not very clear as I forgot to switch on the 'vibration reduction' feature on my DSLR. bah !