San Gottardo

+1

Sampled the new product on CDG-NCE. This was the continuation of a JFK-CDG.

Very disappointing. Overall a very cheap experience. Sure, the NEO seat next to me was free, but I might very possibly have gotten that as well as a Plat in the first rows of economy where they only fill the middle seats when the flight is full.

This flight had six rows of Business Class in an A320. About two thirds full. Some pax were obviously AF staff on their way back home. Not sure whether they were upgraded after doors closed.

af fp

Experienced it on Hop. It was continuation of a transatlantic award ticket in J. There was a curtain, 3 pax for three rows, staff very friendly and lots of chocolate snacks, no champagne, otherwise nothing. It was just OK, not worth a lot.

Leadership

Thank you for this insight, was your flight before 9:30am?

Leadership

It made me wonder if that cabin was not created for the sole purpose of pleasing the staff (cabin crew from province) in exchange of something else (productivity, change in protocole)...

NickB

Thanks for the blog post. Disappointing but perhaps not very surprising as this is pretty much what the pre-launch advertising suggested, as I said in post 28 above. OTOH, I would not buy any conspiracy theory that this is all about more comfort for deadheading crew (and besides, I am sure that those deadheading crew would too prefer a better experience in domestic J ).

A rather more likely explanation is one we have encountered all too often with AF, viz. lack of knowledge of what the competition is doing. While they probably saw that their main competitors were offering a domestic J product, they thought that they probably should too but instead of looking at what they do and emulating it, they implemented their own sub-par version. I think that we can see how we could have ended up here, with one person making the case for a J domestic product, in particular for connecting long-haul J pax, another member of the board strongly arguing against it on cost grounds and the arbitrage ending up with offering it albeit at as low a cost as possible.

Still, now it is there, one can have a reasonable hope that, over time, the sub-par nature of the product will be acknowledged and it will be improved. Yes, I know, hope springs eternal...

Leadership

I agree with you, still, they are technically not "deadheading" crew as they choose to live in province, but I too don't think this is the driver for this domestic J implementation.

It's clear that AF wanted to catch up with the competitors but as always or "et en même temps" they do it as low cost as possible, but if the business case was only to offer a better experience for connecting passengers, why did they decide to propose it on almost all domestic flights?

I am ready to bet that by next winter, this product will be discontinued on most routes with the exception of CDG flights and maybe some ORY flights that connect to JFK/DOM-TOM.

NickB

I don't think that Ben Smith is a fan of hyper-segmentation with a complex system of different products. I've got the impression that he is more of a K.I.S.S. kind of guy on product range, it seems to me so offering different products on different domestic routes is not something that he would be inclined to if it can be avoided, I would have thought.

af fp

You are right, it was before 9:30. I also have to say that is was sufficient since I had time to get breakfast in the lounge, but for some it might not be the case, e.g. on flights coming from smaller airports or if someone has less time at the airport. Also good coffee and tea served in china would be nice.

goavibes

This week on my 12:50 nce-cdg,there was no champagne and no wine from the "Air France business cave". No fancy snacks either, only the eco sucré-salé snacks (I was given both of them...Score !!).
I complained online and got 2.000 miles (FB silver) . A good ROI since I got only 474 miles for the nce-cdg segment for this trip to Haneda, and it was booked months before domestic business was announced. Nonetheless the product marketing blabla is again far away the reality.

San Gottardo

We keep on talking about competition and keep comparing the AF domestic business offering to the domestic business offering of other European airlines.

But other airlines’ domestic products aren’t the competition, with the exception of easyJet and Ryanair that also fly domestic French routes. The competition is against the business class offering from French cities to other European hubs. Customers going to connect to an inter-Continental or other international journey can choose between the Air France domestic business class to Paris and the international business class product to London, Frankfurt, Munich, and so on.

for people travelling only between points in France, the competition is from the Business Première product on TGV trains and SNCF lounges. And guess what: those lounges are a poor experience as well. And the onboard catering is still the stale old stuff from the bar carriage in the middle of the train, with the exception of a paper cup of coffee handed to you on the platform (you’re left alone figuring out which hand is going to carry that cup when you have a briefcase in one hand and your phone with the seat number on the other, or both hands with a piece of luggage each). Compared to that AF is on par.

stimpy

I'd argue that the coffee from the machine at the GV lounge at Part Dieu is better than at the AF lounge at LYS. And even more so in Marseille.

But perhaps more important to people these days is good quality WiFi. The latest train sets and new generation WiFi on the TGV gives passengers what they really want. I'm not sure AF can compete in that arena, at least in the short term.

Bullspread

I have tested the domestic business class this week for the first time .

+ : Really pleasant to book in advance the first row with a free adjacent empty seat, even if as ULTI members I was systematically pre-assigned in the first row.
Champagne was offered and crew team was very attentive : several visits, I got proposed snacks at multiple times (enhanced salted and sweetness). For the first time on a domestic route I’ve been questioned on the ULTI program and I received globally much more attention than I received all these years on domestic flights.
J cabin is quiet good for PAX seeking for a calm cabin.

- : indeed onboard soft offer is quite light. Expresso served in China, fresh orange juice, could be introduced to upgrade and distinguish the offer towards Y.

- - - - : BUT , my big warning is the following one :
This newly introduced cabin seems to be the one for F&F : once the boarding was completed, 2 AF staff members (still dressed in hostess from a previous rotation I guess) entered from the 1L door and occupied directly an empty J row. The plane was far from being full in Y.
This is quite unacceptable for PAX who pay for J and as well for the Platinum and Gold who are travelling in Y and were used to get access to the first row(s). I heard during boarding Frequent Flyers PAX complaining about the non access any more to immediate first row(s) .

To finish the experience, the flight was operated by an A321 without curtains to separate both cabins. One pax from Y before the descente and after his visit to the toilets took the liberty to sit in the unoccupied J row until the final landing ....

So as conclusions, AF needs to auto police rapidly ...

NickB

It seems to me that you are adopting a somewhat narrow view of what is meant by comparing to the competition. You can look at the competition in the narrow manner of comparing two products which are directly in competition on the same market (eg: if I want to fly from XXX to YYY, I have a choice of airline A via FFF or airline B via GGG and I compare the two). You can also look at it in a broader sense of using it for bench-marking purposes even if the specific products are not directly in competition with one another on the same market. When we are talking about the competition between domestic services among the main European carriers, the meaning in which the phrase is used is the latter rather than the former. It seems to me that we engage in that kind of benchmarking, whether consciously or unconsciously, to shape our expectations of the quality of the product being offered. To give you an example, if everybody served the same kind of crap in business class on very short routes as KL serves on AMS-NWI, I would probably not regard the product they serve on that route as unacceptably poor: I would take it as the norm for that kind of flight. The fact that KL has no competition on AMS-NWI does not really have any bearing on the question.

San Gottardo

100% agree.

To make my point differently: the competitors to AF domestic business class are SNCF inOui Business Première and what other - competing - airlines offer as an end-to-end experience from French provincial markets to whatever foreign destination those pax fly to. SNCF and those foreign airlines are what AF domestic business class is competing against, to get the passengers to fly with AF instead of using the train or using the foreign airlines through their respective hubs (of course on some relations there isn't real competition, but let's assume that they just rolled it out network-wise rather than looking at competition line-by-line).

The other thing we do is benchmarking. BA, Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, Alitalia,, etc domestic Business Class are not trying to convince passengers from French provincial airport to fly with them. They can't, given that they're domestic products, so by definition they do not fly to French provincial airports. However, we refer to them as benchmarks, to get a sense for what can be offered and expected on a domestic Business Class product. And there we see that other airlines offer more on their domestic Business Class product.

Just pointing out the difference between competition and benchmarking.

Zembla

An observation on PUF-ORY yesterday, I was offered on upgrade at OlCI for 59EUR. I didn’t take it, but quite interestingly I ended up on row 11 whilst normally I’m always assigned a seat near the front. I observed that the curtain was moved behind row 1 and nobody was in business on the flight. Unsurprisingly, because most of the J connections would fly through CDG.