San Gottardo

Article here here (sorry, only in French)

Aviatrix

Well, it's got a question mark, so hopefully nothing has been decided.

What an absolutely AWFUL name! (Reminds me of Buzz and Go in the UK... neither of which lasted terribly long)

orbitmic

I don't think it's that bad. I don't think that name matters much but anything is better than uber French meaningless acronyms such as PRF! The big question is whether the AF regional operations has the means to be successful and also how much money they wasted to ask H to create this name and logo but personally I don't find the name all that horrid.

BTW, I love the magazine's claim that this name is sort of revolutionary because it doesn't include 'Air' or 'Jet' etc in the name! Swiss, Transavia, Alitalia, Lufthansa, Norwegian, Wizz, KLM, etc. Even airlines which used to boast 'airline' in their name have often dropped it recently (Swissair -> Crossair -> Swiss, United Airlines -> United, etc) I wonder if the article was written some time in the 1970s?

NickB

Well, if Buzz and Go! did not last long, I do not think tha this was because of their names. Go! was doing rather well but BA made a strategic decision to pull out of the low-cost market and sold Go to Easyjet. Buzz, OTOH, was not a success for a variety of reasons but this certainly had more to do with flying inappropriate airplanes (BAe 146) and being a rather small operator competing on Ryanair's turf than their name.

NickB

It does scream LCC, though. If that is what they want to do with the regional subsidiaries, then fair enough. Otherwise, there might be a name-product mismatch.

Mokshu

And as usual, Air France will try to pursue the LCC by degrading its product, its service but won't be able to decrease the operational costs required to be competitive

KLflyerRalph

San Gottardo

On the face of it that is of course true. But "hop" pronounced by a French speaker with the usual level of English will sound like "up", which is of course much subtler than "air".

And if this is the great revolution, they could have kept "Regional", which doesn't have the word "air" or "jet" in its name either (at least not the name used in marketing, which is also the case for the above mentioned companies where "air" is part of the official full length legal corporate name)

orbitmic

+1. I have no doubt that the AF regional product will take a low cost direction (although admittedly it would make more sense to wait for AF's announcement about their new short and medium haul model tomorrow for details) so I think that the the 'low cost sound' of the name is rather appropriate although the fare levels predictably won't be.

NickoSnow

i like this name! Hop and fly!

volerbleu

Here's my Transform2015 plan:

merge AF's HOP and KL's cityHOPper into a new airline called Hop Hop Hop.

orbitmic

^

San Gottardo

Maybe just merge Cityhopper with Cityjet and HOP and make it "City City Hop Hop"? That would reap the price for most creative product naming in the airline industry from another product (incidentally also by AF): "Full sleep"

JOUY31

I would personally find HOP! dreadful, but then, that's just me .

orbitmic

I think you mean "City City City Hop Hop Hop" to be sung just like "Aussie Aussi Aussie Oy Oy Oy" whenever the purser greets passengers at a start of a flight (for those of us who are frequent visitors to that part of the Southern hemisphere)!