The day has finally come. Today Air France’s low cost carrier experiment comes to an end, as the airline dumps the Joon brand.
JOON would like to thank you for sharing this adventure. All your JOON tickets are of course valid on Air France #thankyou #seeyousoon ✈🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/RCv7BbY5MH
— JOON (@weflyjoon) June 26, 2019
Why did Air France launch Joon?
Joon was a low cost carrier launched by Air France in December 2017. It operated both short and long haul flights. The thing is, there’s very little that actually made the airline unique.
The real reason Air France launched the airline was because it allowed them to reduce costs. They were able to hire flight attendants under a cheaper contract (they cost the airline about 40% less), which is the motivation for a lot of airlines launching these types of airlines. Meanwhile the pilots were transferred over from Air France, and maintained their contracts.
They really tried to market themselves as something unique though. Joon claimed to be a fashion designer, a rooftop bar, an entertainment channel, a personal assistant, and oh, an airline!
The flight attendants wore more casual clothes, they had organic snacks for sale on board, and they had virtual reality headsets in longhaul business class. Yay?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXls9p8um04
Why did Air France discontinue Joon?
At the beginning of the year Air France announced they’d discontinue Joon. This was the idea of Ben Smith, who became CEO of Air France-KLM just under a year ago.
Why was Joon discontinued? Smith wants to position Air France as a premium brand, and didn’t think the cost savings were worth the confusion it caused for customers, as well as the brand dilution.
No one is losing their job — Air France is taking over all 17 Joon planes (13 A320s and four A340s), and all flight attendants and pilots get moved over. The pilots maintain their pay, while the flight attendants are getting a huge pay raise.
If anything, this was a very nice gesture of goodwill on Smith’s part towards the unions. One of the big challenges the airline has faced is contract negotiations, and this goodwill went a long way in showing how he wanted to position the airline, and how he wanted to work with employees.
Bottom line
Joon is sailing flying into the sunset just over 18 months after it launched. It’s nice to see an airline countering the trend and actually trying to position themselves in a premium way and throw a bone to employees, rather than focus on saving money at the expense of decent wages.
It shouldn’t take long for any traces of Joon to be gone, since there wasn’t actually much that made these planes different — they’ll just need a new paint job, and that’s about it.
Did you have the chance to fly Joon before it was discontinued?
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