San Gottardo

Over the past ten weeks my travel patterns made me take unusually many AF flights, more than the sporadic European roundtrip every 4-6 weeks. I noticed how many things at Air France have now improved, and on a consistent basis, not just one-offs. But I also reflected that in many cases they are still not my preferred choice. Since AF seems to read this forum, here are my thoughts, meant to be an informative feedback to them and not a mean-spirited rant. Your own personal preferences may differ and so may your travel patterns and alternatives. But I wanted to share this with the forum so maybe AF sees if mine is an isolated view or whether it's shared.

I have taken AF flights in almost every class/route combination. Première on B777 and A380, on day and night flights, both paid and upgraded. Affaires on longhaul on B777, A330, A340 and shorthaul, Premium Voyageur, and Economy on shorthaul and domestic. My flights included flights with subsidiaries on the E190 in Affaires and Eco, and on the Avros in Affaires.

My impressions:

The staff, on the ground and on board: always been fantastic, now even better. ^^ In a way I found Air France staff always the company's biggest asset and their weakest element. They were always good in spreading that aura of hospitality, class and elegance, they were - most of them - always extremely pleasant in interaction. Of course at the same time these are the same people that go on strike for not having to carry a spoon more on the tray or to make sure customers help themselves at the bar rather than being served, that spend time chatting in the galley. The call button has as much significance as a pedestrian traffic light in Paris (i.e. if bulbs didn't need to be changed from time to time noone would know of its existence). Still, across my flights I must say that for most of them they have become even more corteous, but also a little more attentionate and applying "common sense" in making customer requests possible. I have experienced some absolutely outstanding moments of customer service, both responses to requests as well as unrequested ones. Overall still lagging behind the pragmatism of Lufthansa staff or the attentiveness of Swiss crew, but that is compensated by their style. Still I prefer them to BA and give me an AF employee over any USA-based or EK/EY/QR staff any day. Having said that, there are still the occasional negative outlyers, about one in every six or so flights. If I had to make my choice of airline purely on the basis of its staff, I'd pick Air France without hesitation any time for cabin staff and ground staff, but not for call centre agents and customer care.

"Ground experience" (internet, check-in, phone, procedures, transfers, boarding, etc). Overall much (!!) improved, but with some significant needs to improve isolated things . One can see that they spent time thinking and money in this area. They have really simplified many procedures, making the overall experience much less hasslesome thanks to less controls, improved transfer procedures, less bus transfers, etc. I have even done a couple of transits at CDG, and compared to the (very few) times I had done them in the past I found it better organized, less stressful. The Sky Priority labeling and procedures work well at security checks and check-in. On the negative side, their IT platform. Whilst the new website design is a major improvement, there are still major problems under the hood. Plenty (!!) of bugs, hidden information, contradictory information, and a success rate at OLCI which is too low at around 60%-70%. Also, why they cannot do priority boarding on domestic flights is still a mystery to me and I remain unconvinced of the supposed "operational reasons". Bus transfers could be optimized by introducing special busses for J class pax rather than make them wait until the bus is stuffed to the max. What still remains a pain is that the only difference between priority and non-priority luggage is a yellow sticker, but there is no faster delivery, it remains completely random. Handling overbooked flights is stupid as well, where people traveling with status members are not protected from bumping (basically they want you to leave your 2 year old child behind on its own). But in sum I am much more positive now. Where I actively avoided AF in the past simply for wasting time because of their procedures I am now no longer put off, but the patchy performance of the OLCI is a major pain. The other elements (luggage, overbooking of non-status travel companions) are only relevant on a few flights a year, so they don't really matter. Thus, if I had to chose my airline based purely on criteria of "stressfree travel" I would not actively recommend Air France, but I am much less anti than before and this would not keep me from flying them.

Ground, part 2, dealing with irrops. Didn't have any, which is good, so I cannot assess this on any datapoints. But my intuition tells me not to trust the French with dealing with unplanned situations and to prefer being in the hands of the Brits, Germans or Swiss. I still have traumatic memories of dealing with lost luggage, snow episodes, strikes, etc and how that was handled (or wasn't). Put it like this, if there was an ash cloud tomorrow, I'd immediately cancel all my AF reservations and would deal only with LH/LX to get me through the chaos.

Ground, part 3, the lounges. Not improved. I still find their lounges very poor. There are of course differences between the different lounges, but the overall concept of not providing more than different variations of snacks, the sometimes run-down state of them, the badly-designed showers at CDG 2E, frankly I don't look forward to my time in an AF lounge. I find British Airways and Lufthansa lounges better, despite the shortcomings that these have. The Premiere lounge at CDG is of course a major exception. It is a great success in terms of design, "functioning", catering. I have debates with myself whether I prefer it to the First Class Terminal in FRA (and the other FCLs in FRA and MUC) and I end up with both the Air France and Lufthansa First lounges making me equally happy, albeit for different reasons. The Air France lounge is more beautiful and stylish, the Lufthansa one has a couple of highly appreciated features the AF one does not have. In the end, if I had to chose my airline based on the lounge experience I prefer other airlines (with the notable exeption of the Première salon at CDG).

Cabin product. This is the show stopper. Air France's cabin product is still lagging behind peers, both in comfort and service. And not only is it lagging in relative terms, it also in absolute terms is not good enough at least for me to give my business to them when I have a choice. In detail:

Shorthaul Economy: I understand that this a product which is designed to offer low fares and so I do not expect any luxury in terms of comfort or service. But NEO has taken the cheap to an absurdly low level. Would it have been more costly to install seats that at least recline, have a coat hook and a table that is large enough to place a cup and a PC? And whilst I do not expect grand cuisine, the selection of drinks, too, has gone to an absurdly low level. Given a choice, I would avoid AF on most of my usual routes.

Shorthaul Affaires: what a freaking joke. What is this? I understand that in Europe seats in C and Y are basically the same but it is not right that the C comfort is dragged down by the obsession to make the Y seat as cheap as possible. Also, KLM shows how one can have more comfort even on shorthaul flights. The worst bit I find the catering. I don't fly to eat, but people in European Affaires are either connecting from longhaul - so it would make sense to offer them a consistent product throughout - or are going point-to-point and the time on the plane is the only time they have to eat something and they also want to use the time productively. Despite announcements to the contrary AF still has those terrible boxes, which are unacceptable in both form and content. Comparison to the peers is unfavourable. Whilst the gap to Lufthansa is narrowing (which has to do with LH sliding down, not with AF improving) other airlines like BA, Swiss, Austrian and Turkish offer a far superior product. Result, I absolutely avoid AF on shorthaul Affaires if I can. I'll personally avoid AF Affaires whenever reasonably possible.

Variant of shorthaul Affaires on regional planes (E190, ARJ): even lower standards. Lame excuses like "this flight is too short to have pillows loaded" (when i) no flight is too short to hurt my back and ii) shorter flights do have them) and a shocking 2-2 config on the E190 instead of leaving the neighbouring seat free make this a terrible choice. I shall also proactively seek to avoid these flights.

Premium Voyageur. I book this class when I travel to closeby distances (BEY, CAI) with my wife and two young kids. We don't want to go in Y, but J on Air France is expensive for a family of four. So we started taking PV some time ago. Whilst I find the product good enough for the 4-5 hour day flights that we take them on, I only last week realized that we completely overpay. For 4% more I can book it with AF's codeshare partner in Business - and be seated in the same AF plane, but in the J cabin. So, while I find the product a nice alternative to Economy on these distances I shall stop using it if I can be in J on the same plane for (almost) the same money.

Longhaul Affaires: not good enough. We all know the facts on NEV, all peers have a substantially better hard product in Business, only Lufthansa's old - and now in the course of replacement - Business has seats that are equally unattractive. Also the cabin layout is not optimal, too little privacy, and often a somewhat "cramped and crowded" feeling in the cabin. The amenity kits are cheap and beyond the fact that they physically exist provide close to no value, headsets are not sufficiently noise cancelling, and power outlets cannot power more than a shaver. Catering has slightly improved, but is still not good. I'll continue to avoid Air France J class, limiting it to the above fly-Affaires-for-the-price-of-PV on the one route where the alternative would be worse and to cases where schedule constraints dictate it.

Première: quite good, but not good enough. I actually always liked the cabin design, the colours and materials are pleasant for the eye. Seats are comfy, albeit not offering sufficient privacy and personally I do not like its layout on the main deck of the A380 (I prefer upper deck like on some other airines). So far so good, and although I find LX (old and new), BA (old and new), LH (new) have a much better hard product, the seat and cabin would not put me off to fly the AF one. But the rest is an utter disappointment. Amenity kits are poor, the PJs are made of "heavy" cloth and more like track suits than PJs, headsets and power supply as bad as in J. The most scandalous part is catering. What the heck are they thinking? No proper wine glasses? Pre-plated food? Leaving the plastic cover on after putting it on passenger's table (on some flights)? Not enough cutlery (or coming way too late when it's no longer needed)? Distributing starters from a trolley that is reminiscent of the distribution of hospital food? Selection of wines: *one* white wine and one sweet white, and two reds - seriously? The quality of the food can range from very good (e.g. on CDG-USA main meal) to rather mediocre (e.g. on BEY-CDG, CDG-USA second "meal"). Also I found service very inconsistent. From very good and "First class-ish" to sloppy, not attentionate at all, including forgetting certain service items. One FA must have been from the old guard, extremely chatty about his private life when he was around (not realizing at what time I continued to listen only because I am polite but no longer interested in where his great grandmother came from), but then he disappeared (fair enough) and when called reappeared with his sleeves rolled up, crossword puzzle in hand and bellowing from the curtain through the cabin to my seat "You wanted something?" as if I had disturbed him. Sure, just one isolated anecdote, but the kind of thing that should not happen at all in a First Class cabin. All in all this is a no-no, and I'll keep my First flying to LX and LH, and BA when the opportunity arises.

Frequent flyer program, status benefits: not enough to attract me back the Platinum card I have with Flying Blue provides me fairly little benefits. It also compares poorly to BA Gold (which I don't have) and to LH/LX. The comparison to LH/LX is particularly negative. Sure one could argue that the equivalent of FP Platinum is M&M Senator, but Senator has more benefits. But I still find HON a relevant comparison: for my travel patterns, if I chose AFKL in all the cases where I now take LHLX, I'd still end up only with Platinum. So the comparison counts, and even though HON erodes its benefits it is still substantially (!!) more attractive than Platinum, both in terms of written and unwritten benefits. Thus the FFP and its status level are for me a reason to favour LHLX.

In sum I shall continue to use Air France, but very much in the same way that I have used them in the past couple of years: sporadically, when there was no better scheduling or airline alternative. But the positives of all the improvements especially about making travel less are outweighed by their cabin product which is still between extremely disappointing (Première) to outright terrible (NEO), or overpaid (Premium Voyageur). So those flights where I have a choice my business will go elsewhere. Deep inside me I hope that AF will turn the corner, and the experience I have made with staff makes me believe that there is some real potential in the people of that company. But it will take a lot of investment (but they don't have money) and listening to customers (they have been traditionally bad at that) to make it happen. Bonne chance AF!