Air France Rolls Out Business Class Seat Blocking On HOP Regional Jets

Wish BA would do the same with its ex LCY business class

Having a free adjacent seat is the only advantage in terms of comfort one can have in business class on European flights, so -- yay!
On 2.5 hrs plus flights I would prefer a better seat, but in Europe this is not happening yet...

How much leg room is being sacrficed for this?

European airlines should not be able to market this as business class.

The longest flights operated by Hop are 1h50, most of them are around 1hr.

What is stopping Europe from having proper business class seats?

I understand the flexibility of swapping aircraft, but if you have routes that you market as business class, then just keep those aircraft on those routes?

It doesn’t have anything to do with “swapping aircraft”.
It has something to do with remaining flexible until virtually the last minute with how many business class seats the airline wants to sell in relation to economy class.
The curtain can be moved forward a row to turn 4 business class seats into 6 economy class seats any time. Or the other way around…

… to be precise for the Embraer this would be turning 2 Business Class seats into 4 Economy Class seats and vv….

… to be precise for the Embraer this would be turning 2 Business Class seats into 4 Economy Class seats and vv….

Regarding Air France-KLM:
My understanding is, that SAS will not be blocking adjacent seats on their CRJ900 when Business Class will be re-introduced in October. (?)

European airlines really need to catch up with the rest of the world on business class. Those who do not offer an open seat next to the occupied seat, when each seat is an economy class seat otherwise, should definitely be prohibited by EU law from advertising it as anything but economy.

The real travesty though is how US airlines are allowed to call what they sell "First Class". It's business class (with the exception of the rare remaining AA 777 with actual first and, although it's a stretch, the "first" class on A321T's). The First Class nomenclature is an outright lie otherwise in the US market.

Ok so it is exactly about having flexibility, thanks!

BT operates flights to Dubai which can be upwards of 5-6 hours, even 8 hours during the conflicts around Iraqi and Iranian airspace. That’s where the fun is when you are stuck in BT’s 2-3 economy “Business” class seats with blocked seats

… and US airlines should not be able to market their domestic business class as “First class” if there’s no lounge access and no caviar served onboard.

does the EU have the same 1:50 FA:PAX ratio requirement? If it does, its a little weird that AF would reconfigure to 110 minus 6 blocked seats. That would mean an extra FA for only 4 seats. Or is it 110 total incl the blocked J seats?

European regulations vary depending on whether a narrow body or wide bodied aircraft.

Generally speaking, on a narrow body aircraft it is 1 FA per 50 SEATS not per 50 pax. So for example if you have an A320 with 180 seats and there are only ten passengers on board it would still require 4 FA. There are some variances as well with some aircraft requiring additional crew (ie the A321 with 8 doors needs 5 crew).

Because there is ZERO competitive advantage for an airline to lose all the flexibility of a convertible cabin when every one of your competitors is taking advantage of convertible economy seats.

Some airlines tried - Aegean, Air Serbia for example. Before realising no one was prepared to pay the inflated prices and they retrofitted back to eurobusiness seats.

The BIGGEST short haul intra Europe cabins are not BA or AF or LH it is Ryanair, Easyjet. The loco's rule the sky within Europe.

IMHO I think eurobusiness ONLY really exists to offer feeder traffic to/from long haul flights. For example, if someone makes an online search from SFO to CDG in business class results on BA or LH would not return if they did not also have 'business class' on the intra Europe segment.

I remember the nasty surprise I had the first time I flew AY J on an Embraer when my seatmate sat down. The EU should force them to call this premium economy.

Honestly, I’m somewhat confused as to why proper business class seats aren’t used on RJs. Assuming an E-jet has 2-2 in Y and 1-2 in proper J, the airlines would gain a seat compared to blocking the aisle seat which would leave them with just 1-1 seating.

So will these seats be physically blocked or just not booked? If not physically, how many people are going to try to move up to them?

Would be nicer if Europe stopped being a poverty continent and their airlines started offering an actual business class product. As someone who is 6'5", these fake business classes are a joke

Back in the olden days, USAir / US Airways had convertible seats on some of their narrowbodies that were 3 x 3. Depending on the number of domestic first seats sold; the seats were convertible to a 2 x 2 configuration, making the seats more comfortable. That didn't really help with legroom, but it did help with width of the seat.

I think I just dated myself.

"The First Class nomenclature is an outright lie otherwise in the US market."

Calm down. It's strictly domestic and transborder nomenclature, left over from the days when US airline passengers wouldn't have gotten a much different seat on a longhaul flight either.

On today's regional international flights, nearly all US airlines will sell those same seats as "business class," in part to conform with more typical international standards. Delta will sometimes even sell them as just premium economy, like they do to Iceland.

If it's like the US, then it's per-seat. The number of pax boarded or sold-to is irrelevant. So if the airline has 51 seats, it doesn't matter if they (even permanently) choose not to sell one, they'd need the extra attendant.

Sometimes physically blocked by a table. Sometimes not. So far I have not seen that somebody tried to move up

Lufthansa’s A300 also had convertible seats.

If you google Aviation Photo #0333899 you should be able to see a photo.

If they choose to permanently not sell it, they can actually block the seat in a way that it's not counted towards the limit.

This includes visibly blocking the seat, but it must also be changed on the aircraft's type certificate. So, similar to paper-reducing MTOW, it's something you can change, but it's not something you can change every day.

Although I don't completely understand the logic, KLM does it for the 737-900s. They physically have 192 seats, but have it registered as a 188-seat aircraft. The middle seats on rows 1+2 are really blocked. The middle seats from row 3 can be used as economy seats.

easyJet also did it a while back with their 156-seat A319s: when they had a shortage of staff, they blocked 6 seats on the certificate to operate it with 3 FA's. Later, they unblocked the seats.

The argument about connections makes no sense as Eurobusiness is offered by airlines that have few (e.g. Aegean, who incidentally haven't had dedicated business seating) or even no (e.g. Air Albania) long-haul passengers.

Because during the peak holiday periods they zero business class out and sell 4 seats per row in expensive economy booking classes and make more money.

AF is usually 3 across but in biz- they block middle seat so now doing only 2 across?

I remember that too ! it was when they were in bed with British Airways and were trying to do a European biz class in the USA. Did not work well at all and people hated it !

The Embraers don't have middle seats.

They don't seem to do upgrades for elites. They dont seem to sell a lot. I've had a number of flights where I was the only person in business class. The flights are often short. The economics are way different than the US (or Australia). FYI, I never "buy" a erurobusiness, they are part of a transatlantic trip I've booked in J.

Good news. I have a Hop! flight coming up shortly where I have reserved aisle seat. I'll hope to see the improvement next year. While I do prefer when I end up on an AF 320 with blocked middle seats, this may be better. But, every Hop! flight I take is scheduled at no more that 70 minutes. The bigger deal is that Hop! uses the G terminal at CDG.

AFKL are not interested in selling intra-Europe tickets in business class. Lufthansa prices are a lot keener and the price differential to upgrade is often worth it for those who are on connecting itineraries and don't have lounge access through status or credit cards.

I flew in a BA A320 in business class and they put me in the non-reclining row in front of the emergency exits. I basically had a worse seat than most economy passengers. At best it was equivalent to Ryanair. It’s shitty when you’ve just come off a long haul and are exhausted.