Charles de Gaulle is a truly unattractive airport. It's architecture may have been ground breaking in its day but now it feels cramped and dated. It's architectural piece de resistance is a cross cross of Perspex tunnels carrying escalators which weave between each other. It reminds you of a giant hamster house rather than a sophisticated travel hub. It has also failed to adapt to the exponential growth in passenger traffic. 

Most capital city airports often have multiple large long-range jets arriving at the same time. It only takes three A380's arriving withing minutes of each other to create a serious log jam at passport control. Most airports plan for this with spacious arrival halls and generous quantities of passport check points. 

Sadly, for all the trendy Perspex enclosed escalators, Paris airport doesn't seem to have given a moment's thought to the need to process large numbers of passengers quickly. Decanted passengers are fed, like sheep in a race, into an ever narrower dimly lit corridor. The architect was obviously not a traveller or he or she might have grasped a fairly simple concept. Being herded like animals after a 13 hour flight is not something the average traveller regards as a positive part of the travel experience. I would guess there were at least a thousand passengers in the group we joined which snaked its way to the immigration desks. 

Security and immigration officials seem to form a whole sub species of the human race. Perched on their stools in grimy cubicles they look out at the world with jaundiced dispassionate, eyes. You can tell, looking at them, that this wasn't how they planned their lives would turn out.  

There is a wonderful expression which accurately describes the attitude of so many French service workers to the interactions they have with their customers - "je m'en foutisme" which translates roughly as " I couldn't give a damn". It had crept like a plague through the airport,down the land bridges and seeped into the very aircraft cabins of Air France.

For some inexplicable reason, when I checked in online on the Air France app, I was allocated two seats were not side by side or even in the same row. I was too tired at the time to notice this as it was after midnight in Singapore. When we got on the plane we realised what had happened. Not only were we not in the same row, but with a cruel twist of the knife, the Air France system had placed us both in centre seats. So paranoid am I about getting trapped in the middle of a row that I have paid to select seats on most legs of the journey rather than leave it to fate. This was one of the few bookings where I hadn't.

The flight attendant seemed reasonably pleased at my despair at being shoe-horned into my seat away from my travel companion. When I made a sarcastic comment about Air France's zany seat allocation system she seemed even more pleased and smiled in that superior way that says, " I could try and help you out but, you know what, I couldn't be bothered".

The situation was saved by an Italian gentleman who offered to exchange his seat with mine. The attendant seemed less than pleased with this development and curtly turned her back and marched off to the back of the plane. We didn't see her much after that. to add text.