To Fright Level, Gorrilla, and all those who keep talking about CDG, Orly or Africa....You are discussing a whole different thing, And no it isnt very proffessional, AF pilots I have contact with definitely agree on this point.
But then
The Aeroflot crew then ignored all subsequent transmissions from tower, flew a tight circuit and landed.
isnt very proffessional either is it?
Here we are talking about tiny GA strips where there is no ATC, they are the equivilent of Popham in the UK (except with way less traffic) . Usually there is no AG either, just a common frequency where everyone self announces what they are doing, just like Unicom in the USA. There are plenty of Airfields with ATC in France where they will speak English to you.