Originally Posted by
orbitmic
No it wasn't posted before (the info you post generally never is and is always most appreciated by the frequent readers of this forum amongst us
^ )
As
brunos says, it is always fascinating to see how AF will swear so adamantly that their way to do it is genius and will not change for anything in the world before operating a complete U-turn (which may or may not be accompanied by a "we told you so all along"). For years, AF told us that they spoke to business pax and they told them that they did not like fully flat. After wasting so many years, AF finally turned around. For years, AF told us that money was to be made on full fare economy rather than business/first classes and thus that the way to go was to ensure superior service to full fare eco (later "premium") even if it meant an inferior service for medium haul C. Now they seem to be making another U-turn.
When it comes to the substance, I can think of several people on this forum who were very keen on premium economy medium haul and will regret it dearly. I personally won't as I always thought it was not priced in a way that I would consider myself anyway, and all I can hope is that by discontinuing PE medium haul, AF will start introducing more keenly priced discounted C which may ensure that the former PE users still find something that they can buy and that the rest of us might occasionally be tempted further forward for an affordable premium the way BA, LX, or OS do it.
As I mentioned many times, I thought that AF's current system was probably untenable and I am certainly not surprised that PE will go. The very justification (try and attract full fare paying company users) was the very reason why it made no sense (beggars can't be choosers, and service-wise, AF has always claimed that company contract passengers were beggars because they would always keep using AF because of its incomparable direct network from CDG). In effect, few will disappear just because their full fare Y ticket now get them to travel Y, and many of those who can disappear often had good reason to have chosen other airlines long ago).
AF is very proud of its new leather seats, I have heard of them but not tried them and will wait and see. If they do not recline or only little, it will be bad in my view, but I don't think AF will care. As for improved catering, I'm waiting to see what it means. AF seem to love their "hot snacks" and I don't. they think it is improvement and I don't. But let us wait and see I guess... For the rest, the glass, china, etc sounds like what KLM reintroduced some years ago!
Indeed, what amazes me is that AF keeps coming up with these "brilliant ideas" that no airline had implemented before (you wonder why) and then drop them some months/years later. To be fair to AF on this one, European PE has been in operation for a long time but whether its pricing (quite expensive while C was outrageously expensive) attracted many non-captive pax relative to C on other airlines is an open question. And it was a killer for transfer business long haul pax as it meant a poor C service in line with PE (rather than the reverse).
AF seems to move to the standard model of BA and others, with a C with real C service (unlike what AF serves) and hopefully attractive P2P pricing.
PE was economy all along on medium haul flights (it was a special expensive fare bucket of economy), so AF should not have a problem seating in new Y a pax already ticketed in a PE fare bucket. The question is whether the computer will be able to manage seating properly.
BA has an important feature for elites and flexible tickets, that is seat selection from time of booking. I believe that AF badly needs this feature for high economy fare buckets (e.g. longhaul PE pax transferring to medium haul).
Regarding the seat, it seems that there is a trend is towards nonreclining seats. Not all airlines follow the trend though.
Several airlines use leather seats, so that is not a novelty (they are more expensive but supposed to be more durable and easier to clean).
I assume that the retrofitting of A319 and A320 will mean more seats added. On the domestic network, A320s have 13 more nonreclining seats. But not all nonreclining seats have the same shape.
I hate the AF domestic seats as they are hard and their shape is uncomfortable and hurt my back. The new Easyjet nonreclining seats are much better. But I would be upset to have a standard nonreclining seat in C, with just the middle seat blocked. As a comparison BA seats are reclining and are transformed into wider seats than in the back of the plane.