Airline: easyJet
Flight #: U22442
Route: CDG-LTN
Class: Economy
Seat: 11F
Date: Wednesday 11th February 2026
After a fun day of avgeekery and tourism in Paris, it was time to head home and, as with our flight to Paris earlier in the day, we’d be flying back from Charles De Gaulle to Luton with easyJet. Having had an early start and a full-on day, we were both knackered and so got to the airport around 1820, some 3 hours and 15 minutes before our flight. This gave us plenty of time to get through security and passport control without having to stress, and hopefully some time to relax and grab some food before departure. If you want to read the other two posts from this extreme day trip to Paris, you can find them here and here.
From the Terminal 2 railway station we had a 10-15 minute walk to find security and joined the queue at 1835. Security was a bit pick and mix, with some lanes having the new style X-ray scanners, others having the new people scanners, but only one closed lane having both. However, there wasn’t much of a queue and with us only having small hand luggage bags with essentials such as headphones and coats, we sailed through in eight minutes. Passport control took a little longer, with the new EES system in place, but even this only took us 11 minutes to get through and we were through into the B gates at 1857, just under 40 minutes after arriving at the airport.
As with a lot of airports, the gate area beyond passport control has limited amenities, with the B gates only having a Relay, a Pret a Manger, a mini duty free and some vending machines. As such, if you’re looking for a proper meal or to visit a lounge, make sure you do that before heading through passport control. There was a decent amount of seating though, with us able to find a relatively quiet spot to settle down, grabbing a coffee and some food from Pret to enjoy whilst we waited. Weirdly, and I assume it was part of a promotion or sponsorship deal, there was a lot of PS5 gaming consoles dotted around for people to use, so there is some entertainment if you fancy it.
Flightradar24 indicated that the aircraft operating the inbound flight from Luton was G-EZUW, a nearly 14-year-old Airbus A320-200 that had been delivered to easyJet in April 2012. Having had 24 hours off flying, it had done the early afternoon Geneva rotation before then operating the evening flight to Paris. Whilst G-EZUW landed at 2034, and I was hopeful that we’d soon be able to get onboard, it turned out that there was actually an swap happening with the aircraft inbound from Bristol and our aircraft was going to be G-EZTJ. This Airbus A320-200 was a couple of years older at 16.5, having been delivered to easyJet in July 2009, although it did operate as OE-IVO for easyJet Europe between November 2017 and August 2020.
With boarding slightly delayed as a result of the aircraft swap, #BoardingNotBoarding started at 2105, with us queuing on the link to the jet bridge. Actual boarding started 10 minutes later and we were on the aircraft at 2119. Our seats for the flight back to Luton were 11 E&F, two rows further back than the morning’s A319, but still the last row before the overwing exits. Despite being an older aircraft, the cabin onboard had clearly been refreshed more recently as it had slimline seats that result in slightly more leg room being available. As usual the first thing I did after sitting down was get the air flowing from the air vent above, especially necessary as the aircraft was very warm on board. With our departure time of 2135 closing in fast, boarding was complete at 2133.
As boarding ended the captain made the regular pre-flight announcement predicting a flight time of 55-minutes with a cruising altitude of 28,000 feet. Unfortunately, our push back was delayed slightly as we had to wait for El Al’s 4X-EHE to park to the adjacent stand, with us pushing back at 2141 and starting our taxi a few minutes later. Our taxi to the runway took us back passed Terminals 1 and 3, and F-BVFF, the Concorde on display at the airport. After joining a bit of a queue for departure, we took off from Charles de Gaulle’s runway 27L at 2203. A right turn took us to the northwest, and then further right and left turns over Chambly and Beauvis had us on course for the UK.
With darkness outside the windows there wasn’t much to see and I mostly settled down to doomscroll on my phone until we landed. Flightradar24 tells me we crossed the French coast at 2218 near Dieppe and then crossed the English coast nine minutes later near Eastbourne. Our route then took us to the east of Heathrow, with a snaking route over west London, before passing directly over Luton and making a 270° turn over Hitchin and Letchworth to lose altitude and line up for approach over Stevenage. As we made our final approach, I was able to make out the lights of the A1 and an LNER Azuma heading north on the East Coast Mainline, before we landed on Luton’s runway 25 at 2148 UK time, two minutes early after a flight time of just 45 minutes. After a short taxi we were on stand at 2154 and were through into arrivals around 15 minutes later.
All in all this was a pleasant flight with easyJet from Paris Charles de Gaulle to London Luton. The slimline cabin does make a difference with the leg room, even if its only minimal, although with such a short flight time it doesn’t really make a difference. As always, the crew were all great, still managing to do a full service despite the flight time, although it probably helped that most people, including us, just wanted to relax rather than buy anything. easyJet have always been one of my favourite Low Cost Carriers to fly with, and this relaxing flight certainly helped cement that opinion.
Lounge 0*
Seat/Facilities 3*
Food 3*
Service 5*
Punctuality 5*
Overall Rating 16/25 (read about my rating system here!)
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