Biography | Anne Rigail — The Orly West Hall Where She Took Air France's Customer Desk

People treat Orly as Air France's second airport.

For Rigail it was the first hall that had her name on a roster.

She joined Air Inter in 1991, the year she left the Mines.

Air Inter's flying and engineering base sat here, concentrated on the West Terminal, then called Orly Ouest.

The official Air France biography says that in 1996 she was appointed head of Air France customer services at Paris-Orly.

The legal merger of Air Inter into Air France completed on 1 April 1997.

The two dates are not a contradiction. She was already doing Air France work in the old Inter hall before the name on the fuselage finished changing.

Orly Ouest is now labelled Orly 1 and Orly 2 on the airport maps.

The fingers and the arrivals hall still occupy the same plot in Paray-Vieille-Poste.

Customer service at Orly in the mid-1990s meant missed connections, delayed bags, and the French domestic clock.

It was not a communications title. It was the floor.

From this hall she was sent north in 1999 to passenger and baggage connections at the newer machine at Charles de Gaulle.

The West Terminal is still the public face of that first assignment.

Stand on Avenue O and you are on the right side of the field. The brand over the door has changed. The work has not.

Photo: Captainm, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons