Air France Restricts First Class Upgrades In A Major Way...

Many people who in the past would wait to pay the 2k for an upgrade may now actually pay the full price in advance knowing they cant upgrade.

"Major" way is a bit too much.
I know that, from your perspective, changing the rules for award tickets is important (and, as a reader of your blog for many years, I can understand).

But the majority of people flying AF in business class are paying cash. Therefore, I don't consider it to be a major way. It is just a new restriction. And I'm not even talking about the fact that business class award can often be much more expensive than La Premiere award...

Limiting cash upgrade to Platinum members would be a major way (same as when they started allowing only platinum member to book an award ticket for La Premiere)

I've never understood why AF operates F class to a destination like Mexico City when it is so hard to use miles or upgrade cheaply.

Are there really people every day paying full price F to a low-yield destination like Mexico?

This just says that AF sees strong enough demand for a pretty small exclusive cabin to justify further tightening of the restrictions. Given that everyone else is seeing a strengthening of premium cabin demand, it isn't surprising if AF is as well.
And the amount of demand is measured at the time of departure which we simply cannot measure. Internally, AF could be filling enough seats to meet its needs.
And exclusive could also mean NOT having even all seats filled.

CDMX is a financial and fashion/manufacturing hub of Latin America so there would be decent demand for the pointy end of the plane from Europe.

So for us, non-elite members, what is the most practical way to experience air France, first class lounge? What’s the cheapest paid rates generally?
Thanks,
Franco

It's France and Air France. A country and a company in which businesses have never been logically or capitalistically run.

Don't confuse Cancun with the rest of Mexico. Mexico city is filled with rich business men who will happily pay for first class.

Here's a different theory. Someone in AF upper management (but not the CEO or the person with the final say) is trying to get rid of first class. They've said themselves that they don't make money on it. Reducing these monetization opportunities is designed to make its revenue look even worse and convince those with the final say to ditch it. This is consistent with the fact the A350s which were originally meant to come with First class no longer will.

Ignorance much? Mexico City has enough rich people who wont think twice of shelling out for First Class... Likewise, there are enough Europeans and others who travel there for business, etc, that it shouldnt be hard to find somebody willing to pay the fare. we are talking about a city with nearly 9 million people in the immediate area, over 20 million people in the area. It's not hard to find 4 rich people a day willing to spend the money.

Air France has the data and knows what it's doing. If it didnt see F demand to MEX, it would use one if its many planes without F for that route.

Sounds like I’m ready to fly Air France first class. Have the entire cabin to myself without peasants. A true first class will never have a full cabin.

The one seat per flight award rule was announced but never actually put in place, you can find 2+ La Premiere award seats on many flights

I feel the same, but I doubt this is part of the rationale for the decision. The people who pay, more than once a year, for AF F, probably don't like sharing the cabin with points people, bloggers with cameras, or anyone who's not French. It's inexcusably snobbish, and yet I can't totally, completely blame them. F is a better experience when one's neighbours are as refined as one is. It only takes one loudmouth to ruin a silence party. Sadly, this solution won't cure their "problem". Rich doesn't equal refined.

But they are planning on introducing a new first class seat, so...

I would say it's fairly major. I've flown LP several times...only once was an upgrade from paid J, and once was on miles. Every other time was a paid offer from a miles booking in J. This was an easy last minute upgrade from a miles booking at a price I could stomach. It was really the last way in for the "average" person.

Define "majority". I book upwards of 10 round trips a year in AF J and have for years. I've only paid for a ticket in cash twice. Flying Blue miles are easy to come by. So no, I don't think it's a majority. LP awards are only eligible now if you have platinum, so it's a moot point. LP was far more accessible in 2022 vs 2023 no matter how you look at it.

With only 4 seats, this is expected. Frequent F passengers probably bitched about full cabins or not being able to book last minute. Expect the same on LH if they go to 3 seats. Next they only allow people who fly first class to redem for first class. The life at the top!

DenB, you are correct. It's not about the money, it's as the French say, "C'est gentile." Polite, refined manners. If Mother Theresa were still alive and was in F, no one would have a problem that she lived a life of poverty. In a broader sense, though, isn't this issue the same problem with the airport lounges? Rude, loud slobs who clearly do not take advantage of the lounge's showers but who do go after the buffet like pigs on a truffle hunt.

Actually, a friend of mine bought the upgrade from a business class award booked through Flying Blue on July 5th.
I think it is necessary to cross-check the information.

@ Ralf Toenjes -- I've received confirmation from Air France about this change, so this isn't some speculation, or based on just one data point.

Let me just say... all the swear words...
Just found out two days ago that the activity I most looked forward to while in OZ later this year will be closed during the month I'm visiting. I also booked AF J last year with the explicit intent of upgrading one of my two legs SIN-CDG-SFO. I'd have been disappointed if it filled up, but now I'm just angry.

Angry as I am, I still kind of get it. Flew SQ Suites in 2017. 12 seats and we didn't see the only other passenger until we were getting off the plane. Lovely, intimate. Flew them last year again, and while it was cool, it wasn't the same with just 6 seats, and all fully occupied.

And it's actually kind of worth it if we can use it to reinforce the French Snob stereotype

As someone who just completed another WONDERFUL flight in LP on a paid round-trip ticket, this is wonderful news and warms my heart. On my flight, there was one open seat in LP; there was Business Class passenger (blogger type, with multiple cameras) who was pretty upset that he could not upgrade and made sure to let the cabin crew know quite a few times that he wanted to upgrade and was told NO several times by the ground staff. I love that AF restricts LP access to keep it exclusive and the riff-raff out.

AF offers two kinds of LP upgrades: in advance (with some fare class restrictions: note that Flying Blue awards can book into revenue fare classes including J/C/D (and AF sells deepest discount revenue tickets in a fare class that's more often used for partner awards)) and at OLCI.

It seems plausible that they've decided to bar FB awards from the advance upgrade feature (partner awards and discount revenue tickets are already barred and award tickets previously couldn't use the fixed-rate mileage advance upgrades), but may still offer cash upgrades at check-in. That would account for the new policy which Ben has confirmed and Ralf's observation.

Ben Smith recently said that LP was profitable, though PE and J are more profitable per unit area.

I thinks it's really important to note that those 2k upgrades are NOT common. They are usually offered the very first time you try to upgrade a flight from J to F, and once you do it you won't get this "promotional" rate for quite some time, at least a year if not more. You'll just get something more along the lines of $3500-4000, which is pretty much the price difference. So the amount of people who 1/book an award J ticket and 2/get a "promotional" upgrade rate for F is probably not that significant that it's causing them to lose any kind of revenue.

He did the upgrade on the 30 hour prior window on July 5th in a flight from CDG to SIN for around US$2k
Let’s see how it will roll out.

If you can’t afford to fly first, please stay away from the first class cabin. So tired of all the free loaders, social media ‘influencers’ and wannabes taking up valuable space and sullying the experience. These cabins are designed for refined individuals of excellence who should not be burdened by the mudlark behavior of upgraders. All airlines should recognize this and ban first upgrades.

The CEO has spoken about really strong load factors in LP, so they don’t need to hand out lower yield award / upgrade fares, particularly to low yield customers like non-elite or low-tier elite status holders. Makes total sense

It probably took a just few instances of individuals who felt the need to document their whole experience in social media and to "recover" their upgrade cost by drinking excessive amounts of alcohol for Air France to eliminate the least expensive path to flying LaPremiere.

Guests who pay for first class either have stealth wealth or are celebrities. They are well connected and don't want to be in someone else social media pictures background.

I once saw someone live-streaming from the top of Glacier Point in Yosemite with a loud voice ruining the tranquil view for everyone else. Imagine that in the LaPriemiere lounge.

Airlines like Swiss have already recognized this. There are no miles awards to third party programs and even within Miles&More it is restricted to their highest tiers.

I did get cash upgrade offers though on paid business class tickets.

Too bad about these changes. Guess I'm glad I was able to fly it (via upgrading a J award) way back when.

You can get cash upgrades on award tickets at the airport with Swiss. I remember when you could get award F ticket on LX, I would keep saying to myself that it made no sense. I must have booked 50-75 tickets that way through aeroplan. Enjoyed every minute. I upgraded a few paid business tickets but even then its a lot of points (M&M).

It’s commendable if someone pays 1k for a business class seat and is willing to pay an additional 2K for an upgrade to La Premiere.
Why should seats go out empty ?

Well why didn’t someone just pay 7K for a ticket in the first place ? A luxury good should be something desirable but costly or hard to get. Having access to the nicest things life has to offer is out of reach for most.

Well Call me small minded but actually i think its a good move by AF to keep First exclusive-------fairly soon they will have an improved product with [perhaps] six seats so i think its a wise move.

Airlines exist to make money not to cater to people like us who want things for free based on our credit card spend. I think people in the points community fail to realize this quite often.

if you check the /awardtravel subreddit, you always get questions like "why can't I get myself and my party of 6 F award tickets during peak summer / Christmas holiday travel periods" (and usually to Japan) because they don't understand that awards are used to sell otherwise unsold tickets during periods of low cash fare demand, they're not some backdoor way for airlines to give out low priced tickets for every seat on every route at all times

One thing you don't consider Ben is it's better to leave a seat empty and get no revenue rather than degrade the brand and allow some free-loading blogger to brag about how they got it for pennies. All luxury products depend on some amount of exclusivity to get people to pay full price for it. It's one of the reasons AF can command a much higher price than LH/LX/BA first products and they do often sell out the cabin on many routes.

More likely to be 3 or 4 seats than 6, the sketch they showed had 5 windows per row, there's no way they can get the economics to work with so much space per seat. Etihad tried it with the Residence and that space was otherwise wasted (so it wasn't even taking away that much space from F or J), and they still couldn't make the economics work. Once the amount of space per seat passes a certain point, there's just not enough demand (and specifically, high cash yield demand) on enough routes to make it work. If you look at the route network that AF offers LP on, it's way smaller than BA's F route network (and BA offers 2x to 3.5x as many F seats on their aircraft), and that's because BA's F seat uses less space, is a less luxurious offering, and costs significantly less than AF LP, so it can be effectively sold into more destinations

Teeny tiny problem with your logic. I'm vastly more refined than the majority of those who pay for F on most airlines and this restriction will not keep nouveau riche louts out, but it will keep me out. Good luck with that.

I didn't realize paying $2000 cash to upgrade was "free".
Not to mention that banks pay for the miles they reward customers with.

I guess by your logic, they should stop letting anyone redeem miles for anything.

For god's sake, can we end these absurd takes where miles and points users are some kind of master travel hackers? Newsflash: the airlines and credit card companies CREATE THE REDEMPTION OPPORTUNITIES. I think people in the points community fail to realize this quite often.

As one who's flies multiple paid (cash) LP segments, I don't give one jot if the LP cabin is full, who paid cash vs. who upgraded vs. who is on an award, or anything of that nature. If I've paid >>US $10k and the person across from me is an upgrade? Neither my business nor my concern.

All I want is quiet (which means non-performative non-loudmouthed pax) in the cabin. I've never had to put up with an obnoxious "influencer" or anything of that nature, that's just how I like it and that's how I expect it. But that's not just limited to AF, that's for all carriers I fly in first, which in the last 12 months have included SQ, QF, LX, AF, EK, and LH.

As a FB Plat, I appreciate that I'm not competing w/Golds for awards anymore, but I've never defined "exclusive" or "refined" by how someone was ticketed in LP, I define it by how they behave. "Calm down and STFU" (meaning no screaming into phones or cameras, please) is all I want. LP has always delivered that for me, in the air and on the ground.

I *am* sorry about the change in upgrade policy, but fortunately this doesn't impact me.

Now if they'd just bring back LP to JNB...

Have To Say i totally agree!

This comment section is such a fucking disaster. I appreciate all of you shitposters, whether ironic or intentional.

Sounds like you are exactly the profile of person to be removed from first and banned from the program

Yes, Europeans often underestimated the degree of income inequality in Latin America - so while GDP per head is lower than Europe, proportion of people with disposable income over $X00k is higher.
But I don't think they expect to sell all 4 seats very often - 2 is probably decidedly profitable, and possibly even 1.

With such small first class cabins, what happens at T-x hours if there are no passengers booked outbound or inbound?
Do they fly potentially empty both ways, ready with food loaded (and with the dedicated crew member doing nothing, or helping out in Business)
Or do they stop selling F at some point, and therefore not load food; possibly stand down the FC crew member?

I can imagine that on a route such as NYC they keep open the option for late bookings.
But what about other routes?

The other error in this article is the restriction to book only 1 seat with miles for plat members. That is false.

@Dominic: Hear hear...that subreddit is a disaster. The only people typically posting are clearly incapable of doing any sort of research on their own before lazily sauntering to Reddit to has someone ELI5 it to them.

I think it was well known that MEX was one of the easiest awards and upgrades to LP, precisely because México is poor, with a GDP/head roughly one eighth that of the United States. Seems like a lot of Mexicans are upset hearing the truth about their third-world country. Also, go Trump!

Top notch projection of your own disdain for Mexico onto Mexicans. Go figure you like Trump.

Pls clarify - can Flying Blue Platinum members still upgrade from business class to La Premiere using miles (in advance) or cash (at check in) while on an award ticket?

As Robin Williams once said when speaking of the reason they would give for their perverseness, “and why? Because we’re French…”

Where on earth do you get the idea that Mexico City is "low yield".... um, AF once flew the freakin' Concorde there in scheduled service, for crying out loud!

This epitomises what a friend says about the French: I can only describe them with one word: FASTIDIOUS!!
(I have a few French friends, and I agree)

What AF should also do is to stop their crew to upgrades friends and families to First..... I have seen it myself.... Ridiculous.... not even discreet!

By maintaining the integrity of the cabin price. If you can get it cheaply there isn't a compelling reason to buy it at the offered price. Market supply and demand. My assumption is passengers altenative to flying private jets is flying La Premiere if they "have" to go commercial.

Regarding that post saying there’s enough rich people in mexico… i usually flight la premiere and it is frequently empty, me flying along on that cabin. The truth is that truly rich Mexican people, they own their private planes big enough to fly over the Atlantic .

They want PAID FIRST. This way they discourage “elite members” or “ miles experts “ to hold on cash hoping for the cheapest way to obtain the upgrade or paying it with miles . The cabin is so small because I they truly want people who pays to be there.
They prefer to sell two seats for 10k each rather than 4 for 2200 usd upgrade from a miles paid business class ticket .

This is correct. Just booked CDG-JFK for my wife and me on a day next year that showed “2 seats left”. Ticketed just fine - albeit for 536,000 miles… But AF miles are the easiest to make and this might be the last hurrah, so did it anyway!

I flying business on air France every month to djibouti. The service is terrible. The cabin crew often look tired or uninterested. They send the old interiors to djibouti. The USA Paris leg is no better. If they didn't get to Africa the fastest. I would fly Qatar or Turkish.
They have the nerve with their new rule. The should be lucky anyone is flying with them at all.

Seems you are not considering that revenue is different than profit. Just because they upsell a seat for $1500 or $2000 does not mean it is profitable. I guess that both premium economy and basic economy are more profitable than first. Also, they are trying to encourage people to pay a full fare rate even if discounted rather than upgrade.

What about Ethiopian?

I booked a BC ticket and today during check-in, got offered a LP seat for 2K EUR or 280K miles.
I am Gold member, so it seems the title is not totally accurate.

Thank you for your report

I disagree with your thought process.

I think that noone should be able to use miles to upgrade to anything

I think in business and first class should be pay a static number that might vary per season but everyone should pay the same price

This has nothing to do with exclusivity ,it's simple fairness
USA killed IATA which has a golden rule 30-40 years ago . No seat can be sold based on demand but based on value and this ruined the industry and made any trash person buy their trash seat for 1 dollar cause danger to other normal people who have daily showers and wear pants and shoes , and this made the seats so small and smaller and smaller now business seat same size as economy in 1980. I say let there be easyJet for people who like to travel trash multiple times a year and let there be clean people airlines that can travel once a year or once every 5 years well not like dogs and cattles

Do you know that Ethiopian airlines is only airlines that had more crashes than any major airlines combined.no thank you. Turkish to me sucks . Qatar ok

You can pay 600€ for the lounge

Mexico City is the cheapest destination when it comes to upgrade to LP from J so ‍♂️

I spoke to Air France today and they said nothing has changed. I know that customer service is not always correct but I am hoping that they are.

as of dec ’23, with no fb status, i’ve continued to get J to La Premiere upgrade offers from af on af-booked tickets for the ~2k usd.

It's funny that 99% of the US population (let's call these rural pumpkins) are laughing at CDMX...

Hello, Sam. Was your original AF business class ticket booked with cash OR points/miles? If the latter, which airline's currency? Thank you.

Hello, Jean Paul. Did you book your original AF business class ticket with cash or miles?

Thank you for sharing your data point.

This data point from Ralf Toenjes seems to contradict what Ben reports concerning an LP upgrade from a business class award at online check-in (OLCI). but maybe AF implemented its new upgrade policy for tickets booked with miles/poin5s *after* July 1, 2023 (not actually flying after then), or maybe AF was not strict in enforcing the policy at the start of implementation?

It would be great to see some data points six months since the policy shift for LP upgrades from a J award at OLCI or airport check-in.

I think they are tired of seeing mileage junkies coming in to First Class and having the aristocrats who paid go “Ee-OU! How did they get here?” If that happens enough they are scared that customer will leave and go find a private jet.

I love it. I flew Le Premiere 11 times last year and am doing so again. Business travellers often lack the etiquette that makes first class a superior experience. There. It has been said.

I pay so I don't have to deal with Business Monkeys who call themselves "road warriors", screaming children and the "self-entitled. Le Premiere is an efficent and smooth process from soup to nuts. And more private than business class. And suits me.

This is no longer accurate. I'm flying Air France using points in business Dxb-iAd-cdg this Tuesday the 26th of March. At check in they offered an upgrade to la premiere for cdg-iAd. I took it.

By how you write, you seem to have no etiqiuette whatsoever.