olivedel

From April 11th, 2016, Air France will offer a complete dinner service at JFK lounge for J customers on flights AF9 and AF11.
Once onboard, they will be able to sleep without being disturbed.

Dinner will be available on the mezzanine of the lounge.

Customers will benefit from the same meal offer than onboard. There will be a buffet with cold and hot meals.
There will also be a table service performed by lounge staff.

The crew will be know who dined at the lounge to make sure these customers will get the rest they want onboard.

But all passengers can still dine onboard if they want to.
Crew will maximize rest time onboard.

Breakfast will be served before landing.

Prior to their flights, customers will be informed through e-mail or during online check-in.

It will not be necessary to register to benefit from this service. All AF9 and AF11 J customers are eligible.

Source : agentconnect.biz

Goldorak

Excellent move from AF ^

SEA-Flyer

This is awesome news. Looking forward to trying this when I fly AF11 this summer.

SDQBound

Glad to see this as well and looking forward. I was about to skip the BEST cabin and book the JFK-ORY flight but this and the fact that there is no arrival lounge at ORY made me change my mind.

brunos

Frankly, I do not understand this.
For a long time, BA had a "sleeper service" on selected flights.
But, the dining in the lounge for J pax is compulsory (F pax still have the option). That means that the cabin is quiet throughout.
AF system means that there will still be the noisy supper service on board, so you might be surrounded by pax having dinner and FAs talking to them. No way you can sleep; at least no way I can sleep and I usually skip dinner during my JFK-Europe flights.

Sure, it is a bit constraining to grab a quick dinner in the lounge before boarding, but doing what AF plan to do will not provide a sleeper service to those who do.

Goldorak

But pax who paid a J ticket should have also the right to have dinner on board if they wish, no ? There are plenty of reasons why you can't have dinner in lounge (arrived just at boarding time or just before). And with the ear plugs, frankly you hear nothing.

orbitmic

Actually, I think that "compulsory" overstates it quite a bit: J pax still have the option of a full supper onboard but you simply get a much reduced menu, which typically involves starter, salad, only two mains that typically include either a hot pasta dish or another main (sometimes hot sometimes cold, I have never really understood!), and dessert, in other words, not much less than what you currently get on AF. That said, on all my flights, some people do use it (very few do but always some). My sense is that there will be very little difference between the BA and AF versions, except that:

- for some weird reason, AF only offers it from JFK (BA does most East Coast destinations),

- AF offers table service which is nicer than BA (only buffet for J);

- AF offers the fuller menu onboard (as mentioned, on BA, it is limited, but still includes hot dish and everything)

- but AF will only offer the onboard food to people who have not eaten on the ground (on BA, you can do both or neither or whatever you want).

In F, you get the full menu onboard BA indeed, and while the pre-flight dining varies, from JFK and IAD, it is vastly superior to AF's offer.

NickB

I have not had any BA JFK-LHR service in C for quite some time (only JFK-LCY, which has a different, non-sleeper service) so perhaps the service is more substantial than it used to be but my previous experience on sleeper services was very far from that: a small snack comparable to the second meal on US-bound services in terms of quantity and certainly not anything remotely resembling the main meal on a CW service. I have certainly been hungry on BOS-LHR services, where the pre-flight supper in the lounge has been extremely low quality slop with I passed on, with next to nothing being offered on board as supper.

orbitmic

I'm not sure which of the two CWLCY services you took, but the J catering on JFK-LHR is effectively very similar to the later CWLCY service (BA 4). In fact, LHR-JFK and LCY-JFK services are now largely aligned and prepared by the same catering companies (it is the only route serviced by Do&Co outbound!) so complete with warm pudding and choice of the sandwiches or the mezze/cold plate for the afternoon tea service outbound too and slightly improved breakfast.

San Gottardo

I have been on numerous flights where I preferred sleeping to dining. Two things will make the big difference, whether or not the crew put on full lighting and if they use their trolley to serve pax. But if the cabin layout gives you some privacy (BEST seats do) then it's quite easy to just take ear plugs and eye shades and cocoon in your seat and get some rest. Just hoping that the crew will really do everything to maximise rest time for pax and we won't have shouts of "Jacqueline, il te reste du Schweppes sur ton chariot" from an FA serving row 6 to her colleague parking her trolley in row 15.

Let's hope that this is only the first step and that IAD and BOS will follow.

But why only AF 9 and AF 11? I understand that the earlier flights leave before NYC local dinner time. But for people on a European bio clock offering this for the earlier departures (AF 7 and AF 17) that gets into CDG at 07h45 and 8h30 respectively would be great too, as an 18h20 dep from JFK means dinner around 17h local/23h bio clock time in the lounge, not too early in my mind.

^

Not so according to the OP:
Their own or that of pax? Pas de la chair ŕ patron after all...

+1

NickB

BA2, which is still more like supper than a full CW meal but felt somewhat better/more than standard sleeper fare.

orbitmic

Yes, even though BA2 is "officially" a sleeper service (all evening JFK are) it effectively has a more "proper" menu than BA4. By contrast, it has a simpler breakfast compared to BA4 which offers eggs benedict or full English rather than the "breakfast sandwich" a la BA2. I personally prefer BA2 as I happily skip the breakfast altogether especially if I take the arrivals service which is very nice for CWLCY!!

orbitmic

Actually, my comment was based on what the OP said:

But I think that re-reading the sequence of his post, I suspect that your interpretation is correct and that it does not have to be either/or. However, in that case, I don't really understand the point of telling the crew who used the pre-flight dinner service??

San Gottardo

I don't know either, but I could imagine that crew have that list so that they don't go and bother these people and ask them whether they want to dine. Which makes you wonder whether someone at AF would just for the sake of it take just one JFK-LHR flight and see how it works there, and they'd see that even without that list FAs know whom they should "bother" and whom not. Actually quite straightforward, they just ask pax while still on the ground whether they want to dine or not ;-) Which also would strike as the "safer" way to do it, because maybe a pax did have the intention to dine in the lounge, is registered as such, but then received a phone call and didn't get the time to dine in the lounge, but would still be on the FA's list. Sure, the pax can just ask, but AF could just as well do away with that whole list thing.

Whatever, this is a minor point and I could imagine that AF makes some modifications to the protocol as they go along. Include more JFK flights, include other East Coast departures and YUL, no more lists, reduced meal service on board, etc.

BTW, how is breakfast these days when coming back from North America East Coast? My in that direction was last summer from Boston (on the 747-400 ^^) and I can remember trying to wake up my daugther sitting next to me, but I can't remember what there was for breakfast. Is it still the frugal version with just a croissant and a cup of coffee/tea? Or something more serious?

orbitmic

I haven't done AF on that route for a while, but I believe it is still that breakfast that really befits Y, like a little croissant/muffin, rock hard fruit mini-plate, bread butter, jam and that's it I think (maybe a yoghurt I can't remember!)