Originally Posted by orbitmic

When you say "anything", do you mean the equivalent (the first class lounge in 2e)? Because this is one of the few aspects of AF operations which seems to consistently get rave reviews - notably by people comparing the two.

To go back to the original topic, again I can only agree AF and for that matter kl seem to know quite little about competition. I have met one person in the AF hierarchy who seemed to know competition well but for all practical purposes he seemed to be the only one. For what it's worth and at the risk of being insulted for what I'll say, I think it replicates a rather narrow conceived and very national universe of reference we tend to use in France (the exact same or even worse could be said of the US but there the universe of reference is obviously larger). France is my country and I love it, France and AF alike are open minded and tolerant but (comparatively) not at all cosmopolitan. Similarly, to put it simply, most AF key leaders are French, most come from the same few grandes ecoles, and even more importantly most have never worked in other airlines. Worse I think that these three points are seen as normal or even taken for granted while once you compare to most airlines (not least the best of them) they would be seen as nothing else than astonishing. I for one certainly find it flabbergasting that AF is trying to rival against BA, U2 , LX or TK without having ever poached anyone (in top ranks) from those competitors.