When I heard that my cousin-in-law was getting married in the South of France, my first thought was "Gosh, this is going to be expensive." We are a family of 5, one being our newest addition being born 2 months ago. Thankfully, I saw ads for French bee, a low-cost budget airline that offers long haul direct flights from SFO (San Francisco International Airport) to ORY (Paris-Orly Airport). With that, we finalized our plans on attending the wedding, bought our tickets, and packed up the whole family for the trip!
Price
So first things first, let's talk about pricing. The wedding was set for Labor day weekend, and we made a pretty last minute decision to go since we were sure if we would be traveling with our newborn. Many tickets from other airlines were easily $1,100 or more for regular economy seats and direct round trips. On French bee, we were able to get each ticket for about $750 for four passengers (babies under 2 travel free!). We ended up saving upwards of a thousand dollars for our family of 5 in choosing French bee, which meant we could spend more on delicious french dishes and fun experiences instead. If you are traveling with a larger family, French bee seems to be the best way to save.
Check-in
Online check-in was pretty straight forward, though oddly the French bee website's design makes links turn into the same color as the regular font when previously visited, so I had a hard time finding the correct link the after the first visit! Here is the French bee Online Check-in page in case you were frantically trying to find it like me. You can check-in 24 hours before your flight, and it will close check-in 1.5 hours before the flight takes off, so don't do it too late! You can download the boarding pass onto your phone, and go through security with it.
One word of caution - on our way back to San Francisco, the online Check-in confirmed our check-in, but didn't give us boarding passes. It said we could get our boarding passes at the gate, but once we got to the Orly airport, we were stopped at the early phases of the security check, and had to run all the way to the check-in desk to get our boarding passes. We had originally arrived 2 hours before our flight, and by the time we found out we had to go back and find the front desk, we only had about 15 minutes left. My husband went himself to find the desk, thinking he could just get the passes himself, but turns out we had to all be present. We actually ended up missing the 1.5hr cut-off by 4 minutes, but the folks were kind enough to get us processed after explaining that we confirmed our check-in the day before.
We were able to get our boarding passes and made it to the gate. My husband, at this moment as you can imagine, was covered in sweat. He got pulled "at random" for a check. It probably didn't help that he has a huge beard and wore a utili-kilt. We waited for him to finish the check (which the baby did not appreciate), but he cleared the check, and we finally got to our seats.
Seats
We got economy seats on the Bee Light plan. This is the most basic option which doesn't come with a meal (you can still purchase a meal separately). The seats themselves are pretty small, and aren't the most comfortable, but do the job. I did think they reclined pretty well for an international flight, and made the journey a bit more enjoyable. My body is still in a postpartum state, so sitting for long periods of time was pretty painful on my bottom. I ended up standing up for some good chunks of the flight, especially when the baby was fussing and needed some walking bouncy time.
We didn't have our business together enough to get the bassinet seats, but we did see another couple and newborn sitting in the front with the bassinet. Very helpful if you have a baby who is fine with sleeping in them! The couple also had a 2 month old, and had a harder time keeping the baby happy, so it seemed like they did more chest sleeping than bassinet sleeping, but the extra leg space in front looked mighty nice.
In-flight Entertainment
We weren't totally sure what to expect since this was a budget airline, but we were pleasantly surprised that there was a monitor on the seats, and a good assortment of movies and games. The kids had a choice of some great Disney hits like Moana and Raya and the Last Dragon (I probably watched their screens more than I watched mines). For more mature audiences, there were a fair share of Marvel films like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and Thor: Love and Thunder. There were plenty of films to choose from to fill up the whole flight.
There were also some games that me and my kids found pretty compelling. They had some classics like Solitaire and Uno (though I found the Solitaire game a bit buggy). Our favorite was this gardening game where you basically planted animal plant hybrids to maturity to get more seeds and collect all the plants in the game. I did a speed run to see how fast I could collect them all, and it took me about 30 minutes.
Another thing I found interesting, and something I might not have noticed before on previous flights, are the external cameras on the plane! There is one above and one below the plane, and you can view them at any time on the flight. Its pretty cool to watch the plane take off and land, and see the various landscapes and clouds when flying halfway around the world. We also had middle seats and didn't have access to the windows, so this was very nice to have!
Food
So food is not complimentary with the Bee Light, but you can still purchase meals separately. I had brought snacks on the flight so we didn't have to resort to purchasing overpriced snacks, and we also got one kids hot meal and one adult hot meal. We were initially confused and thought we would all get a meal since we weren't even entirely sure how we ordered the meals online (hubby must have clicked on the meal plan when purchasing the tickets), so it was good that the two meals and the snacks were enough to tide us over.
Both were pretty tasty!
They first brought out the kids meal, and it was a huge hit with my daughters. It was a mac n cheese with chicken nuggets hot meal, with some string beans and carrots. There was also a cold rice salad with diced peppers, corn, and olives. It also came with a bag of classic Lays chips, bread with bitter, a Tillamook cheddar snack sized, two (2!!) KitKats, a vanilla pudding, and some water. I honestly felt like the kids meal was even better than the adult meal given the large assortment of food!
The adult meal was also pretty tasty. Overall more tasty than the kids meal. It came with a chicken parmesan over spaghetti as the hot meal. It also came with a carrot salad, bread with butter, a marbled cake, and snack sized Oreo. The chicken parm was very tasty and filling.
They provide free baby food for babies onboard! We couldn't feed our baby yet since she isn't past the 6 month mark yet, but we were curious as to what was available. They had puree carrots and apples - the standard kind of baby food you find in those tiny glass jars.
Would I fly again?
We were only in France for a week, and only 24 hours in Paris, and it reminded me how much I love the City of Light. There is so much to see and do, and we didn't even get to visit my favorite Musée de l'Orangerie! We will definitely travel again, at a time when we aren't time bounded by school so we can truly explore and soak in the people, food, and art. So yes, we will definitely fly again! We haven't done much traveling as a family outside of visiting family, so maybe this will be the start of our family traveling!
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