steveholt

I think you're handwaving away the difference between 8 and 4 (and possibly soon three) much too easily.

jamiel

Exactly right...they have to live with what is now an "air B&B model" (i.e. scarce resource--only 4 per departure) where accepting a mileage booking meaningfully deteriorates the availability of LP services for paying customers. The Bonvoy forum has an analogous situation where a super-unobtanium got no "waivers/favors" when cancelling a Marriott Home/Villa...

jamiel

but 8 seats over 3 hubs reduces the cost of a mistake (inability to accommodate a paying customer) by far more than 1/2. Logic would say that there is significantly less upset/consternation with a last minute reroute through MUC or ZRH on a paid Lufthansa F booking.

SFO777

I think you all are giving AF more credit than it is due. Don't forget, this is Air Canada pedigree. Other than LAX and JFK and seasonally SFO, the LP cabin rarely sells today out prior to check-in and the upgrade offers, with the current award policy.

I almost always fly AF LP with the occasional J where there if no P, both paid and award travel and this is my Christmas gift.. $50 discount on Economy only flights.

stimpy

This went to everyone in AF's US database. I am sure that AF will be sending you a special Christmas gift.

orbitmic

Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have been BA GGL/CCR cardholder when there was one for years, taking plenty of F and J flights, and BA never ever sent me a Christmas, birthday or anything else gift!

physicsdude

LP fares from the US have jumped up. LH/LX fares in F from JFK-Europe to most places are still around $7000, BA in F from the US-Europe is around $4500-$5500, but AF have increase to at least $8500. In addition, other places such as SFO/IAD/MIA are all at least $9000 to Europe in LP and these places won't see the new LP cabin until late 2024/early 2025. Looks like they're also trying to restrict those who pay full fare...

SuperEWR

Not surprising, AF has by far the fewest F seats to the US (LH / LX / BA all have 8 seats in their F cabins, with LX offering F on every flight, BA offering F on many flights including to destinations that don't have F from AF / LH / LX, and LH is offering F from both FRA and MUC) and F on AF in particular is likely ultra-premium leisure (stronger right now than corporate travel) given that corporates tend not to pay for F and France is the largest inbound tourism market in the world. So AF has far lower supply of F seats and higher demand, it's natural they'd have the highest fares in F

San Gottardo

Indeed.

Crazy to see that a small airline like Swiss has more First Class seats in the Switzerland-New York market (32 per day) than Air France has in the France-New York market (16 seats). Same on Los Angeles in summer when Swiss has two flights a day (16 vs 8). And Miami in winter on certain days, when Swiss has two flights a day and AF only one with P, Swiss has four times as many seats (16 vs 4). That shows how very small the Premiere operation is as part of the overall Air France.

SuperEWR

I think it's a different product positioning, arguably AF "needs" fewer F seats since up until BA / VS got reverse herringbone seats (which are still not fully rolled out yet), AF had indisputably the best J hard product (and also a very solid soft product) across the Atlantic of any major European carrier with their across-the-board reverse herringbone fleet (and the occasional A350 with the same seat as United Polaris). LH's current J is nowhere near as good a seat, LX / OS do a bit better but still not great, BA's CW was similarly nowhere near as good (though CS is on par), VS's old herringbone seats were also not as good as AF's reverse herringbone, and even sister carrier KLM's 777 2-2-2 seat is not. Only when you look at European carriers with more limited route networks to the US do you have a similar level of hard product where everyone has aisle access (IB, AY, SK, maybe TP). The old justification for why carriers around the world have ripped out their F offering is that J became good enough (plus corporate expense accounts would no longer pay for it). AF, out of the European carriers that offer F (BA, LH, LX) has the closest business class to being "good enough" to not need an F product. As a result, I think if they had an 8-seat F cabin like the other three, you'd see lower load factors at similar price points because fewer people would be willing to buy up to F from J than on BA / LH / LX. Additionally, the previous CEO of AF-KLM (Alexandre de Juniac) was quoted as saying that "no one makes money in F" and that it's instead used as a marketing tool to provide a halo for the whole airline. If that's the case, you want to cut down the number of planes that have F as well as the amount of real estate it takes up on the plane, but have something that's really good that people speak highly of when talking about Air France (given it's generally considered among the top 2 or 3 F products alongside Emirates' new 777 F and Singapore's new A380 suites, I think LP is doing that just fine). Of the 3 other European carriers with F, only LX is committed to having the 8-seat cabin across the fleet, while BA and LH are cutting back F (I know a number of BA planes used to have 14-seat F cabins, now they're all 8 and not on every route, while LH similarly is mostly adding new planes without F), and I think that's because the nature of Swiss market makes it very high yielding plus the more limited route network of LX means that pretty much every long-haul route that LX flies, there's enough O&D demand from Swiss passengers for F to justify the cabin. The destinations that for example LH or BA or AF flies to without an F cabin, LX frequently just doesn't fly to at all (I'm from Seattle so I'll use that as an example, BA offers F but not necessarily on every frequency while LH and AF do not offer F at all and LX doesn't fly to SEA). A loyal LX premium flier going to SEA will instead just connect on LH through FRA. Then looking to LAX as another example, BA / AF / LH (both FRA and MUC) / LX are all offering F, but because AF has by far the best J of those 4 (though BA's CS has closed the gap), it maybe doesn't make sense for AF to offer 8 F seats when there will likely be fewer buy-ups from more people being satisfied with their much better J. AF is purely offering F as a halo product on flagship routes, while BA / LX / LH are using it both as a halo product as well as to offer something "acceptable" to more demanding premium fliers who find their J products to be not that great.

I haven't flown every carrier that offers a transatlantic J, but I know people generally complain about the seat, the service and the food being not on par with Asian and Middle Eastern carriers, and I've found AF to be really good in J for a non-Middle Eastern / Asian carrier. Coincidentally, one of the times I was flying to CDG on an award ticket, I was offered a buy-up to LP at the check-in desk for I think ~$1k, and I turned it down thinking that the reviews I had seen of AF J were pretty good, so a buy-up was unnecessary. I think if I was flying BA (this was pre-COVID so it certainly would have been CW), LH or maybe even LX (if a non-throne seat), I probably would have gone for the buy-up given how much more mediocre their J products are

orbitmic

You haven't flown a 330 or one of the last remaining 77W with NEV4 (can't remember how many of them are left? I think 8 or 9 by now?) in a while right? I'd choose BA old CW, LX J or even the dreaded LH over them any day.

I agree that the soft product on AF is very good, probably the best for European airlines' long haul J (as long as you don't have a short/medium haul connection with those dreadful "meals")

In short, I don't think that AF P strategy has anything to do with "need" or with the quality of J. It is simply a commercial choice to make the product "rare and expensive" and to effectively largely limit it to very small numbers that they can easily sell for the highest possible price. They precisely don't want to think of P as an upsale from J (though they retain the option to do so by enticing selected J pax to buy up to P but the difference is still relatively steep even when offered and on many flights they don't need to).

LH or BA still have a very different strategy (despite reducing F cabins over time), to have F as a "higher level of comfort" for people who are already planning to buy J anyway, in exactly the same way AF try to encourage Y pax to buy W instead. So the offer is more systematic across routes, seats are enough to have both "straight F" and people who "would typically buy J" on almost every flight, and price differences or upgrade offers are often a lot less steep (and on BA can occasionally be offered for free through specific promotions).

It's just completely different philosophies of what First "is" between AF and BA with LH and LX somehow in between.

SuperEWR

I thought they got rid of them on transatlantic routes? I've only flown the 777 reverse herringbone J and only seen those rather than the old product when booking transatlantic routes on AF (plus occasionally seen the A350 in the schedule as well). I can't remember whether it was under Ben Smith or Alexandre de Juniac, but I remember one of them specifically said they were going to make a push to put AF above their transatlantic competition by using the reverse herringbone J on all those routes and presumably shifting the old 777 product as well as the A330s to other routes. I've seen the old 777 product on routes to Seoul and Osaka (I've not looked at TYO but I would assume it gets the reverse herringbone to be competitive against NH/JL) and I would assume they probably also shifted old products to the Africa routes where those are still head and shoulders above their competition, if there even is any

SuperEWR

Sorry for the double post, not sure how to edit the quote after I posted while just quoting your original unedited post.

I think we're saying the same thing, LH and BA's strategy of F being as you call it a "higher level of comfort" for people buying J only works because their J product is not that good while AF's J is pretty good, while AF is only trying to offer LP as a rare halo product. I imagine that as BA finishes rolling out CS, we'll see F limited to fewer routes and potentially even a smaller cabin, while for LH's previewed A350 F cabin that will roll out alongside their new J, the bloggers are speculating on the number of seats, with the primary guesses that I've seen being one row of 1-2-1 or maybe 2 rows of 1-1-1, either way a reduction from the current 8-seat cabin. So once the other European carriers' J products are brought up to par (with AF setting that standard), their F products will similarly be dialed back in availability (both routes and cabin size) to something similar to what AF LP is now

orbitmic

AF doesn't really affect planes by routes beyond the "standard" division between leisure and standard configurations and even that is not set in stone. So no, to my knowledge, transatlantic doesn't really get any special treatment on that (though only flights with the possibility of no P-leisure config are at risk obviously), and in fact, based on the description I got, at least one of the NEV flights on CDG-BOS last week and I believe another on EWR also last week (description less clear).

In any case, AF does not have a specific P strategy for transatlantic vs rest of the world and in fact it does very well with P on a few non-TATL routes from what I understand.

Unfortunately, I don't remember which tail ids are still to be retrofitted (I think the last 12 were all in the GSQ? and GZN? series but I don't know which exactly) but if anyone does know them, it should be easy to check on flightradar24.

SuperEWR

I'll have to dig it out but I know there was an interview with one of the CEOs of AF-KLM where they said they were focused on putting lie flats on every TATL route to be the most competitive airline across the Atlantic (though it seems like they haven't quite hit that goal).

Re transatlantic P vs RoW, I was using transatlantic just as an example but it's equally applicable if you look at the other routes that all the European carriers serve with First (namely, MEX, GRU, JNB, DXB, and SIN / HKG / PVG / PEK / TYO), it's equally applicable. There's of course different dynamics in those markets, particularly to Asia where corporates still do pay for F for top executives, but the relative positioning of J / F of the European carriers is the same