also, maybe the French prefer AF more than the Dutch prefer KLM...

77A has similar total capacity to 35G but is significantly more premium heavy. That's why I'm surprised to see this aircraft change.

What surprises me even more is, although Lavinia Lau said "... there was a notable increase in demand for our premium cabins driven by ... most notably the Paris Fashion Week ... resulted in September having the highest premium cabin load factor ... in 2024", CX actually schedules 359 on CDG in late Feb/early March when there would be another Fashion Week. Dunno how they could cope with this demand for premium cabins with 35G.

Though there is a chance that 77J may be deploy to CDG at that time, so let's see.

maybe another reason is AF's A350-900 they send to HKG is the one with new cabin products in all classes which is actually very good, and can compete against cathay as cathay doesn't fly over russia. (unlike most other European routes), so more people would choose to fly air france.

I don't think that is true. Compared to the 35G the 77A has 4 more J seats, 4 more W seats and 82 more Y seats.

It's a small difference in premium seats but a lot more Y seats and overall 90 seats more.

I think you have mixed up 77K and 77A.
77A (4-class 77W) has 6F 53J 34W 201Y, so compared with 35G it has excess of 6F 15J 6W and -13Y. All in all 77A has 27 more premium seats than 35G.

Yes, you're right. I got confused with the discussion about the FRA flight, which went to 77K.

I took this flight return HKG- CDG- HKG late Aug/ early Sep earlier this year. F class 6/6 full both sectors. I used BUD both ways (paid combo I/ D Biz class); unsure if others were using miles or BUDs or cash. J class also very full. So I'm surprised by aircraft change. Maybe winter bookings aren't as robust? Or maybe the Aria Suites retrofit requires some sort of reshuffling?

I don't see why that would be the case. CDG has a bigger domestic market plus a similar foreign catchment.

I used to travel a lot this route in F pre-covid. F was usually full, possibly with awards. This was also a time when both AF and CX had 2 flights on many days of the week.

The domestic corporate market in France is mostly captured by AF, even if it is much bigger than in the Netherland. I suspect that with the economic downturn, many wealthy Chinese/HKers have downgraded from F to J.
Another reason, mentioned above, is that AF is offering its top J product to HK with closed door, while CX still has an old Cirrus seat. And KL only flies 4 times a week.

BTW, I see that AMS is switching to A359 by the end of March. We all know that CX schedules for the next season are unreliable, but ...

CX defaults every single long and medium route to A350-900 (except for ones with first class) for future seasons, they would change it towards the very end of winter 24 I believe.

Another possible reason why CX send bigger plane to AMS than CDG is that Paris is so well served by different airlines compared to Amsterdam, customers got so many choices to pick from. Unlike Amsterdam, the frequency and choice of airlines also a lot less, so maybe CX can get higher yield from AMS. Also AMS is popular among Asian visitors, so they got lots of connecting traffic.

Indeed, and KL only flies 4 times a week.
Another observation: The Olympic was very destructive for CDG. Traffic was much less, contrary to expectations as 1) tourists avoided Paris during the summer 2) all transit pax avoided transiting through Paris.

CX261dp this week
 

Just flew CX261 in W on Tue this week. W in full, Y is almost full (I saw less than 5 empty seats) and J seems to be 36/38 when I checked with expertflyer before flight but 11D/G seems occupied when deplane.
Diamond/Emerald queue is less than 8 when boarding

AMS serves the densely populated Netherlands and is quite accessible from the Rhine-Ruhr area, I’d guess some thirty million people, Paris metro and surrounding cities is maybe half that?

I think this may indeed be the key. I believe Air France offers a far superior product to Cathay. Seats, crew, food … They even offer a better lounge experience in HKG - the uncrowded Qantas lounge. 😀

I think those used to CX's A350s would disagree with you. We love the current Cirrus seats, definitely the best reverse herringbone seats out there. AF's seats couldn't compared with CX's...
In terms of crew & food, unless AF is million miles ahead of its European counterpart, it is hard to believe it can even come close to Cathay.
For the lounge in HKG, QF lounge is less crowded simply because the Pier is better. No decent food available (other than cheesecake) out of the 2 or 3 hours before QF flight departure...

If we must pick a reason why the French prefer their own carrier relatively more than other Europeans, maybe it's just because they are generally more "xenophobic"? Like how they dislike English and proud of French is world famous, you can't find a French-speaking crew on CX right?