Exactly. AF seems geared to customers conditioned to accept poor service. Priority baggage simply doesn't exist on AF. Anywhere. AF management either do not understand the need for such elements or they have been unable to persuade unions of the desirability of such. Just as competitors are ramping up service standards AF management are still trying to assess whether any such service is even required. They are that far behind. Consequently I am doubtful about M de Juniac's chances of success.

I have not seen anything on AF that is even in the same league as the LH First Class Terminal in Frankfurt.

When you say "anything", do you mean the equivalent (the first class lounge in 2e)? Because this is one of the few aspects of AF operations which seems to consistently get rave reviews - notably by people comparing the two.

To go back to the original topic, again I can only agree AF and for that matter kl seem to know quite little about competition. I have met one person in the AF hierarchy who seemed to know competition well but for all practical purposes he seemed to be the only one. For what it's worth and at the risk of being insulted for what I'll say, I think it replicates a rather narrow conceived and very national universe of reference we tend to use in France (the exact same or even worse could be said of the US but there the universe of reference is obviously larger). France is my country and I love it, France and AF alike are open minded and tolerant but (comparatively) not at all cosmopolitan. Similarly, to put it simply, most AF key leaders are French, most come from the same few grandes ecoles, and even more importantly most have never worked in other airlines. Worse I think that these three points are seen as normal or even taken for granted while once you compare to most airlines (not least the best of them) they would be seen as nothing else than astonishing. I for one certainly find it flabbergasting that AF is trying to rival against BA, U2 , LX or TK without having ever poached anyone (in top ranks) from those competitors.

So that's one thing the AF lounge(s) is better at than the LH lounge(s)... ^

Actually, not yet, as my flights this month have been to the UK, but last month to Madrid, before the terminal changes, was fine. I'll get to try the new setup at the end of the month.

With respect to comparisons, I have seen people comparing AF lounges with CX lounges or BA lounges at LHR that are significantly better. I have seen people, such as nicolas75, comparing what AF lounges offer with their needs. I believe both approaches are legitimate.

I do quite see that if one needs only somewhere to have a cup of tea and read the paper for a few minutes pre-flight then the lounges are fine. On the other hand if I have been busy working all day, or am in transit at CDG from somewhere else, have not had dinner, and arrived at 2E en route either HKG or SIN at 22h00 I DO want something more than a bag of crisps and a rather unattractive slice of ham before I get on the plane for 12-14 hours. Additionally I DO want access to a reasonable loo and even perhaps a shower if I have had a long meeting all day and arrived from MRS and not been home. Bizarrely 2E lounges are massively under-looed and woefully under-showered. This is particularly acute in the K and L gates. 2F is actually quite repulsive early in the morning if one is connecting ex Asia/USA to NCE or MRS. Totally inadequate with long waits (not to mention rather squalid on some days).

As a customer, with my pattern of almost entirely long haul travel connecting about half the time to and from domestic flights (NCE/MRS), I find the lounges both inadequate to my needs (other than the fantastic selection of presse) and considerably inferior to those of the competition. A culture of insularity and rather near-sighted penny-pinching at AF causes me to have reservations about the prospects for improvement.

Hmm... I agree on your other point on wanting food (although again, I think that while AF food is absolutely not adequate, the recent experience you described above was most unusual and the 'standard' is definitely for sandwiches, salads, fruits, yoghurts, and cheese plates and cake plates to be there. Not nearly as good as BA but definitely more than crisps and ham as the usual offer) but not really with this one. I actually find the loo situation ok (for men and apparently for women) and the showers much better in the AF lounges than both BA (which are particularly ghastly with the most stupid 'wet room' concept ever) and LH. Shower packs are also much nicer, and that is true both at CDG and outstations. I also like the Clarins massages at CDG and find them much easier to get than the evasive elemis massages at T5, which are basically impossible to get unless you fly F. So that's one part of the argument on which I don't really agree.

You are right. The first class (premiere) lounge in 2e is supposedly to be very good. It was modeled after the Lufthansa First Class Terminal. I have used the business class and not the First class one in CDG so may not be a fair comparison

I know they (AF) provide limo drop off.

LH first Terminal, they pick you up from the plane in a mercedes or a Porsche and take you there are well. On short connections they have walked me through German Immigrations and customs straight from the plane bypassing everyone.

FRA has a first class lounge and a First Class Terminal. I was referring to the First Class Terminal which is a stand alone building separate from the terminal with its own access. AF Premiere Lounge is part of the terminal and not a stand alone facility like the Lufthansa First Terminal

+1

Good executives fly the competition, bad ones don't. A friend of mine is the EVP of Emirates & he tells me that he flys airlines like LH, BA, AI, etc all the time (the airlines that try to compete) but wint waste time w airlines they don't compete with unless he's heard they have a great new product. Years ago, TWA had a small group in mgmnt (all part of the QA team) and half of what they did was fly around (on TWA & competitors)

I was indeed refering to comparisons (on other threads in this forum) between AF's F lounge in terminal 2E and LH's F terminal at FRA. I'm sure that having a fully dedicated terminal is great, and the drop off by LH in luxury cars is apparently more impressive than with AF in less luxurious ones. However, other have reported that the quality of the food and drinks in the AF F lounge is quite a bit superior to the LH's FCT, that massages are some of the best around, and people have also mentioned exclusive perks such as fast track immigration in some US airports which I don't believe any other airline F (and certainly not LH) provides at this stage. That's why I reacted with a bit of surprised when you mentioned that AF had nothing in the same league as LH's FCT (but if indeed you were referring to the specific fact that it is a separate terminal, it is of course quite unique to LH indeed).

And I agree with others that I am most grateful for blocking skype on AF's wifi. Many a times, people shouting at their laptop when I was trying to get a minimum of peace and quiet after a long and tiresome day or flight has made me feel on the verge of being homicidal. Even though I know I keep repeating the same things over and again, I also still think that with the increase of large lounges now for most airlines in their hubs, quiet zones should become a staple offer. I just don't understand why I am to be subjected to loud phone conversations that are uninteresting and intrusive to me while anyone would presumably (and understandably) start shouting and screaming if I played a Beethoven's sonata at a quarter of the volume on my laptop. I don't want to deny people the right to use phones (well, actually, I would really like to but I know it won't happen! ) but I don't think it is unreasonable for me in an increasingly mobile-phone-invaded planet to ask for areas where passengers who like me want some relative silence and myself could enjoy exactly that.

In your paragraph you yourself hit the hammer on the nail: it's not skype that is the problem, it's people talking loudly. Be it into their phone using a GSM connection, into their phone using an VOIP, be it using a VOIP connection installed on their computer, be it to each other sitting in the lounge.

Skype is just another technical method of connecting people to a phone conversation. Why this particular technical method should be banned and not others which may just as well lead to noisy behaviour is unclear to me. You could just as well ban ties because people using VOIP in lounges often wear ties.

Therefore I find it very lame to block skype. I often use it, on my mobile phone, interchangeably with a "normal" GSM connection, with my headset, making as much or as little noise as if I was using a GSM connection.

Thus: I am all ^^^ for condoning loud conversations, through whatever technical platform. People using loudspeakers for their phone conversations should be banned (which kills the "shouting at their laptop" syndrom, which indeed is terrible). Having quiet areas is also a good idea. However, I against banning a certain technology which in itself is not the issue but merely one of many possible conduits of bad behaviour.

Condoning or condamning? From the rest of your post I guess the latter. I agree with you that the issue is loud conversation and (to be honest, even more importantly) lack of consideration for others. I guess the 'technical' issue with Skype is that while in your case, you use it from your mobile phone and thus can use it very much as you would any other phone conversation, I have had issues (for some totally random reason, particularly at FRA in the lounge used by DL) with people Skyping from their laptop, without any headset, just playing the sound as loud as they could make it and shouting back into their computer. This being said, while I think it is a technical issue to take into account, I should add that I don't believe AF are blocking skype on free lounges because of a fear that this will disturb people but simply to negotiate their Orange bill down!

I guess the whole difficulty is one of theory and practice. In theory, as I mentioned, the only 'real' problem is people who 'invade' others with sound wherever and however it comes from and show a total lack of respect/consideration for anyone around them. In effect, if people show respect and consideration (and moderation) they could use whatever they want as far as I'm concerned. The problem is that many people don't and that makes any solution that we can envisage in practice (ranging from allowing everything and letting people who are bothered 'fight' loud people all the way to a complete ban on phones) partly impractical and partly unfair, and the truth is that neither I nor - I believe anyone else - has a convincing solution (well, in my dreams I have one - install a little device in every noise-associated instrument from mobile phones to cars which would safely blow the instrument off whenever a certain decibel level is passed. I can't even tell you how many times I have thought of how wonderful it would be if a motorbike passing on the street with trafficked ultra-noisy engine could be equipped ).

All I can say is that on several occasions, I have witnessed scenes relating to phone or communication noise in lounges leading to an escalation of tension and on one occasion to actual violence. More often, it has been people telling each other off ('do you realise that the whole lounge is listening to your conversation?') or insulting each other. The notion that everyone should be punished by forbidding phones or anything else sounds unfair. The notion that people will self-discipline or that lounge dragons will enforce a 'reasonable noise' policy is unrealistic and contradicted by facts on a daily basis. That's why I think that ultimately dividing lounges between 'quiet' and 'connected' areas would be the best solution and feasible in larger lounges. In the 'quiet area', people would be requested not to use phones, skype, listen to music, or have loud conversations. In the connected areas, phones and skype would be allowed as would conversations. I genuinely think that this would be a really big improvement for everyone!

It is also because I am concerned about people not being willing to self-discipline why I am vastly opposed to allowing any form of voice communication during flights. Trains, buses and underground are here to prove us that people don't self restrain, and in a confined space from which one cannot escape and may be stuck for a long time like a plane, I think that the airline which allows this should take responsibility for any ensuing air rage incident of which they would be the objective accomplices. As for me, I wouldn't wait to see it happen and as long as not all airlines follow suite, I would gladly boycott the airlines in question.

Err, right, you caught me. I should change the stuff that I am smoking before posting on FT

And whilst I do follow your reasoning, I also have made the observation that I have been disturbed far more times on planes by people who have had a drink too much (imagine the EK A380 Bar on a flight to the UK or the Netherlands) than by people talking to loudly into their phone/skype on board (in fact never so far).

Whatever, in the end it is probably exactly what you say, it is not AF that has blocked skype but orange

I certainly agree - drunkenness on planes is undisputedly the single leading cause of incidents, and in the past few years I have witnessed far too many of them, but in a way, sadly, it doesn't have to be either/or. Although this is just a hunch, I'm guessing that particularly in the 'front' of the plane, crew don't dare to refuse serving alcohol to people who are clearly already intoxicated, and in fact more generally, some airlines are far more pro-active about avoid alcohol-fuelled air rage incidents than others. However I think it is a more straightforward case as long as airlines are held responsible the way any bar tender would be held responsible and in trouble if they served alcohol to people who then hit another customer in their bar. The other thing is that in my experience, air rage is not really an either/or thing. Most of the cases I have witnessed exploded when the alcohol problem was then 'ignited' by an additional incident (actual cases I have witnessed in recent months: in one case, cabin crew finally refused to serve more alcohol to the passenger who then gets upset, in the second, drunk passenger precisely became very loud and another passenger asked him - very politely - if he could just bring his voice down as kid was sleeping - that led to insults and intimidation by the drunkard and escalated from there on. In the past i have also had similar cases with always that same scenario that the alcohol either leads to noise or meets a pretext and things degenerate onwards). In other words, while alcohol can lead to bad results, and x other factors can lead to bad results, the combination alcohol + x can lead to even bigger problems.