Friday's French music break - Jennifer Lopez ft Pitbull, "On the floor" (Air France flash mob)

Friday's French music break this week is just a little different.

As you can see from the title it's a recent single from one of the world's biggest stars, US singer Jennifer Lopez with a little help from rapper Pitbull (Armando Christian Pérez).

Not much French about that, you could be thinking.

Well that might be the case, except that Air France employees decided to use it as the music for a recent flash mob at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

Not the greatest dancers, but who cares (screenshot Air France flash mob)

 It might not be a good time for either the company with over 5,000 jobs on the line, or its passengers in a few weeks time when staff are threatening to take industrial action (hooray - that'll make a change) to protest the cuts.

But let's not get too serious about that four-letter word that is the "news" for a moment and have a bit of fun courtesy of Air France cabin crew and ground staff.

Flash mobs of course have been around for several years, and perhaps the most famous is the one performed on Oprah Winfrey by the Black Eyed Peas and 21,000 of her fans in Chicago back in 2009.

You haven't seen it? Take a look.

The Air France flash mob might seem a bit pale (to put it politely) in terms of performance and certainly numbers, but the element of surprise for passengers waiting in Roissy's somewhat soulless modern monstrosity that is Terminal E, was clearly still present.

It all begins, just as flash mobs always do, innocently enough, this time with an announcement coming over the public address system paging Lopez.

There's little reaction when it's made in French, but when repeated in English, you can see that some passengers really think J. Lo is "in the house" - so to speak.

And then the music kicks in, the "performers" take their places and "strike their poses".

All right, so it's not the best choreographed routine perhaps (no, definitely) - and some of the participants look as though they've put in less than five minutes training.

But who gives a stuff?

The waiting passengers appreciated it and heck, it's not a bad way to spend your time before you take your flight, is it? at the airport.

In fact if those threatened strikes occur, it could be the only means of whiling away the time.

So enjoy, and here's hoping it brings a smile to your face ahead of the weekend.

And as always, have a good one.

Investigation to be launched into passenger revolt at Toulouse airport

France's junior minister of transport, Thierry Mariani, has called for an enquiry into the events of Saturday evening at Toulouse's Blagnac international airport which saw passengers aboard a Moroccan lowcost Jet4you 'plane stage what has widely been reported as a "mutiny".

Jet4you 'plane on the tarmac at Blagnac airport, Toulouse (screenshot BFM TV)

But he remained guarded in an interview on national radio, stressing that, "Passengers taking over an aircraft could not be approved."

"We'll try to find out what really happened, and if the company is at fault, there will be sanctions," he told Europe 1 radio on Sunday.

"But the pilot must be the person who is in charge on a 'plane," he added.

The 137 passengers aboard the Casablanca-bound 'plane refused to buckle their seat belts after the captain informed them that the aircraft would be making unscheduled stops in the French cities of Bordeaux and Lyon to pick up other passengers; adding another six hours to what would normally have been a 90 minute journey.

They demanded that the company provide a direct flight to their destination.

What happened next was reminiscent of a similar incident just last month which saw angry Ryanair passengers refuse to leave one of its 'planes when it arrived in the Belgian city of Liège after being diverted from its original destination Beauvais in northern France - 342 kilometres away.

The pilot of the Jet4you 'plane cancelled the flight, allowed those who wanted to, to disembark, cut the lights and heating and left the remaining 85 passengers on board in the dark.

And that's where they spent the whole of Saturday night.

Interviewed by BFM television (see video) the following day some of the passengers described how difficult conditions had been on board the 'plane with children crying and everyone being cold and hungry, and they criticised the airline's lack of professionalism.

Once again it seems a low-cost airline takes the term "budget" to mean that it can do and say anything.

In Ryanair's case it was to have their passengers arrive almost 350 kilometres away from their scheduled destination.

For Jet4you, it seemed more than acceptable to triple the duration of a trip to suit its own planning.

On Sunday the company informed passengers that it would fly them directly to Casablanca in the evening.

But somehow doesn't it all seems rather a lose-lose situation, both for the passengers who spent a miserable night on the tarmac and the airline, which hardly did anything for its PR image?

Angry Ryanair passengers stage a sit-in

Ryanair Boeing 737-800 (Wikipedia, photographer Adrian Pingstone)

Lowcost airline Ryanair might well be the cheapest way for many Europeans to fly from point A to point B, but it surely needs a lesson or two on how to treat its passengers.

During the night of Tuesday to Wednesday more than 100 of them refused to leave one of its 'planes after it arrived in the Belgian city of Liège after being diverted from its original destination Beauvais in northern France - 342 kilometres away.

Beauvais of course is the town Ryanair refers to as "Paris" on its list of destinations, even though it is in fact almost 80 kilometres from the French capital.

Most of those on board were reportedly French, returning from holidays in Morocco, and their night of misery began when the flight left - three hours late - from the Moroccan city of Fez.

Unable to land in Beauvais because it was too late and the airport was closed, the 'plane was diverted to Liège, not a destination to which the airline normally flies, and landed late in the evening at 11.30pm.

But the passengers hadn't been alerted ahead of time according to one of them, Mylene Netange.

"The plane didn't land in Beauvais but in Liege without warning us," she told Agence France Presse.

"Consequently, we refused to leave the plane."

The passengers reportedly refused to be budged for four hours, demanding that an alternative means of getting home be provided.

Remember they were over 300 kilometres away from where they should have been.

But their protests seem to have fallen on deaf ears as far as Ryanair was concerned.

Instead they were left sitting in the dark after the pilot and cabin crew had disembarked and it was airport officials who took over the task of trying to negotiate with them and arrange alternative transportation.

Great PR for Ryanair who, as the French daily Libération points out, only a few days ago announced a net half-year of €424 million.

There must be a moral somewhere in this tale.

Flight quarantined for two hours following false alarm

Passengers aboard a flight from the Portuguese capital Lisbon to the southwestern French city of Toulouse found themselves in quarantine when they arrived at their destination - the reason, a suspected case of cholera aboard the 'plane.

But in reality it turned out to be a false alarm caused by a misunderstanding between one of the passengers and a member of the cabin crew, and a system of "coping" with a potential crisis that took on a dynamic of its own.

A Portugalia Embraer 145 (image from Wikipedia, author - Bthebest)

It all began half an hour after take off when a passenger aboard the scheduled flight, operated by Portugal's national airline TAP, felt unwell and made his way to the loo.

Concerned for his state of health, a member of the cabin crew attempted to find out what wrong.

And that was when the problems really started.

The stewardess, who reportedly didn't speak a word of French, misunderstood what the passenger - himself a doctor - had said.

Somehow she confused his explanation of "having a simple stomach ache" as being a "suspected case of cholera" and she took the appropriate action by informing the captain.

It was, of course, a false alarm, but one which quickly took on a life of its own.

The passenger was confined to the back of the 'plane, the cabin crew donned the obligatory masks, no food was served for the duration of the flight and the authorities in Toulouse were alerted.

In the meantime another doctor aboard confirmed the passenger's self-diagnosis, but that could not prevent the 'plane being greeted on landing by the emergency services and a two-hour quarantine being place while investigations were conducted.

It was, as Françoise Souliman, the secretary general of the préfecture of the département of Haute Garonne, explained afterwards, a false alarm based on a simple misunderstanding, but one which had required appropriate action.

But that perhaps was little consolation for the passengers who were reportedly offered no explanation throughout the flight and must have been more than a little concerned when, on arrival, they saw the emergency services board the 'plane.

DON'T mention the word bomb on a 'plane

Yet another story of a French citizen falling foul of local authorities while abroad.

After the case of those detained in Brazil in December for causing a disturbance on a 'plane, comes the story of Jean-Louis Lioret, who finds himself behind bars in Abu Dhabi for "making a pleasantry about a bomb".

These are perhaps more than ever times during which witticisms or quips don't exactly go down a storm at airports or aboard 'planes, no matter how clever or smart you might think they are.

Actually maybe they never did as customs and passport officials are hardly renowned for their sense of humour.

And in the light of what happened on Christmas Day last year when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, it's hardly surprising that questions have been raised about air safety and security and that cabin crew and passengers alike are more alert and sensitive.

That's something maybe Jean-Louis Lioret should have borne in mind as he made what he obviously thought was a harmless comment but for which he now finds himself behind bars in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Lioret was on his way from Paris to Bangkok last week on board the UAE's national carrier Etihad, when the 'plane made a scheduled stopover in the country's capital Abu Dhabi.

Another passenger reportedly asked the 66-year-old retired engineer if he could place a package next to him in a vacant seat and, according to Lioret's brother, Michel, who has managed to talk to him in prison, he agreed.

"Of course," responded Lioret. And then those ill-judged words, "As long as it's not a bomb,"

"It was just a pleasantry" says his brother. "And even though Jean-Louis tried to tell the cabin crew as much, they alerted security and he was taken off the 'plane."

Lioret and his brother (and perhaps others) might have thought the remark to be inoffensive, but airline staff and local officials obviously didn't think so as the Frenchman was "arrested in accordance with international standards currently in use, that any passenger suspected or even joking about terrorism can be stopped."

In the UAE an individual can apparently be held for seven days without being charged.

The French deputy consul in the UAE, Carole Loisel, who has reportedly also spoken to Lioret, says the conditions in which he is being held are good.

"He has not yet appeared before a judge," she said. "So we don't know exactly what he is alleged to have said."

Christmas return home unlikely for French tourists in Brazil plane row

There seems to be little hope that three French citizens detained earlier this month by Brazilian authorities for causing a disturbance on a 'plane, will be home in time for Christmas.

On Monday their families had hoped to have a private audience with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, but all they managed to do was to hand in a letter asking him to intervene on their behalf.

So what's the story all about and how come two retired French men, Michel Ilinskas aged 61 and Antonio Nascimento aged 64 ans, along with Emilie Camus, a 54-year-old hospital worker from the Parisian suburbs are still in Brazil and being held under house arrest?

Well, what happened to them perhaps needs to be seen in the light of the Air France flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris which crashed into the Atlantic in June killing all 216 passengers and 12 crew members and the fears that has understandably engendered to many taking to the skies.

The three were among a group of French tourists who had been on a two-week cruise and were due to return home from São Paulo on December 6 aboard a flight operated by the Brazilian airline TAM.

Their 'plane was reportedly held on the tarmac for three hours because of a malfunction in the aircraft's computer system.

Explanations from the flight crew as to the cause of the delay were apparently only offered in Portuguese and English, and although Camus, who speaks Portuguese, was able to translate, some passengers, among them the three who were later arrested, panicked and requested to be allowed to disembark and take another flight.

That request was refused and somehow "talk of rebellion" reached the cockpit and the police were called in to detain the "ringleaders" and escort them from the 'plane.

As can be seen from the accompanying amateur video, they weren't exactly treated with kid gloves.

Ilinskas and Nascimento were held on suspicion of being the main "rabble rousers" and Camus, was also arrested accused of having "incited violence" through her translations.

On Monday the families of the three and their supporters rallied outside the Elysée palace in Paris, the official residence of the French president, hoping they would be able to persuade him in person to intervene with Brazilian authorities on their behalf.

But all they managed was to hand in a letter, and they hold little hope of seeing their loved ones before the holiday season starts.

"The only hope I have is an intervention at the highest level," Muriel Ilinskas, the wife of one of those detained, told French news.

"It's a complete nightmare and I don't see an end to it."

It's official, Paris Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport is the world's worst

To anyone who regularly (or even infrequently) has the displeasure of passing through Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, France's major airport, the findings by the independent Canadian-based website sleepingairports.net that it ranks as the worst in the world will come as no surprise.

Back in April this year even this mild-mannered Brit was forced to bash away at the keyboard to share with others some of the horrors offered up by what has to be the biggest mess and work in progress, Terminal E (read more about that here).




But according to the website the problems experienced by passengers at CDG aren't just limited to one terminal.

The site asked its readers to rate airports on what it calls the "four Cs"; comfort, conveniences, cleanliness and customer service. And Roissy failed to deliver the goods on all counts.

All right so it might not be the most scientific poll ever taken, but the results, albeit only for the first six months of this year, and the comments, aren't far off the mark, as anyone regularly faced with the prospect of passing through CDG will know.

Filthy, noisy, unwelcoming and full of outright rude and unhelpful staff were just some of the comments made as Roissy beat out Moscow's Sheremetyevo, New York's JFK, Las Angeles' LAX and Delhi airport in India for the least coveted title of the world's worst.

The findings haven't gone unnoticed here in France, although the perhaps Aéroports de Paris (ADP), the authority that owns and manages both Roissy-CDG and the capital's other major airport, Orly, might wish that they had.

But at least they had one defender (of sorts) in the form of Jacques Attali who, among many other hats he has worn, was an advisor to the former French president, François Mitterrand.

Even he had some difficulty though in downplaying the arguments and comments of what is after all an independent website and whose contributors hadn't exactly been coerced into making their remarks.

He argues that although the reputation is without doubt unjust as there are plenty of ADP staff at both Roissy and Orly who "do their best to welcome, help and make the experience of passing through the airport a pleasurable one" there is also some substance to the findings.

He imagines arriving in France for the first time and seeing rather "hideous and vague signs, reminiscent of East Berlin".

"No human being there with whom to interact and no welcome," he writes.

"And it's worse for those arriving early in the morning when there are in general just a couple of police at passport control doing their best to deal with thousands of passengers arriving from North America and Asia."

Ah yes, Monsieur Attali, ADP and sleepingairports.net, there's many a horror tale this (and I'm sure other) user(s) of Roissy-CDG could tell.

Perhaps some will comment here and recount their stories or even (now this really would be a surprise) others will come to the airport's defence.




One thing's for sure, Roissy-CDG is a far, far cry from Singapore's Changi airport, which has consistently received rave reviews, regularly rates as the world's best, and charmed this traveller when he passed through for the first time earlier this year.

A holiday in its own right.