Air France's A350: Business Class Seats, Routes, And More

I assume they will use the aircraft on a short haul for training after delivery
They flew the a380 and 787 from Heathrow for a while before it was placed on intercontinental routes

Routes online also referred to a one off service from Seoul on 29 March 2020. How is it going to get from Paris to Seoul since it would operated CDG ICN CDG ?

Why those routes at all? Why not fly it to Dubai which I presume is more high-yield, high-demand? Or Montreal? Or Toronto?

Anne Rigail has announced that the ABJ flights will serve as training and that they’re not going to do short haul training to LHR and LYS this time

I just don't understand why AF is now introducing another business class product. So we have this on the A350, the angled flats on the A380, the reverse herringbone on the 787 and the 777 and the fully forward 2-2-2 on the A330.

Consistency is nice. People complain about BA but you always get the same product (until Club Suites of course).

This is the roughly the same seat as United Polaris, no?

I disagree that reverse herringbone seats are the same. I prefer the Polaris seats because I like the true window seats, which feel more separated from the aisle and have 3 windows. I also like being flush with the side of the plane. The Polaris seats are also nicer for couples because you can choose the center seats that are directly next to each other! It’s near impossible to have interaction with a traveling partner in a reverse herringbone seat.

@jds a380 to be refurbished and Ben smith mentioned continuity in product

@ray why Dubai ? Africa is extremely important for the AF network with a huge amount of oil revenue

United has exclusivity on that seat in the North American market only.

I like the Zodiac Optima much better as reverse herringbone seats. They should install that on all longhaul planes 🙂

I’m fine with the seats as long as they have the same amount of room as the reverse herringbone seats. I personally haven’t flown them, but the seats themselves look cool and sleek.

AF must be looking at 350s to replace 77W, which have 60 business class seats. Judging by CX, this would result in a virtually nearly all J configuration, a la SQ. As AF does see a lot of demand in Y, Optima is a good compromise.

Polaris seat looks very good here. Love the seat arrangement. Chic.

I am fine with the seats as long as the same amount.

@Ray because there is little competition. European carriers would easily fill their front-cabin with business and government travelers flying to/from their former colonies, with the back packed with aid workers and travelers from/to Europe and North America.

Ben: We’re on Business AF/Joon CDG to FCO on 9/24. Any idea what they’ll put us in? My guess is whatever the Joon plane would have been, maybe with a new paint job?

First comment here. Loyal reader. Love your blog

Thanks.

Of course it’s about density! AF has quite a lot of flights on routes with relatively little premium cabin demand (like Bamako) and as nice as reverse herringbone seats are, AF really doesn’t need them to win the business.

I suppose the only surprise is they didn’t go with something even more dense but it would perhaps have been too much of a downgrade, it’s not like people are going to say they’d rather connect in Germany instead and fly LH for their superb J product.

@Ray
Bamako and Abidjan are very popular routes with barely any competition

@ AL from the end of June, joon ceases to exist though it will take time to reconfigure and repaint the aircraft The flight crew were always AF and cabin crew are being moved to AF contracts / uniform etc

I am flying tomorrow ICN-CDG in J on the ancient 777-300ER with their horrible 2-3-2 angled config (which I also had on the outbound from CDG.) I don't understand why this route which previously featured the 1-2-1 set up has been downgraded to such a worn and dated aircraft. Spending 12 hours on a flight with a seatmate closeby is not something I'd expect in 2019.

JOON is an ad hoc charter service on the Cape Town - CdeG route. We travel with then once or twice a year as it is a direct (?) non stop flight. If you are lucky. Everyone of the Air France JOON flights we have taken has been problematic. Dates are changed after booking, flights are arbitarily cancelled and at present am in Paris on days different from the initial booking and wondering whether the CT leg will fly as planned on 28th to get home. Last year we had to go via Maritius a day later. The only reason for using this airline was it was supposed to be a non stop direct flight.
This is the very last time we will be travelling JOON - it is totally unreliable and will go BA as we do every September changing at Heathrow. Never a hiccup with this and have been doing this in September for many, many years to get to Paris.

How can AF get the seat when the manufacturer cannot make enough for United?

This actually makes 4 business products now, if you count the old product that's still in service on all A380's and many 777's... While I love AF, there's no brand consistency at all when you fly, and it's hit or miss what you're going to get on a new route you've never done before.

My flight from CDG to YYZ was changed from the 777 to the new a350.

Our flight on AF from YYZ to CDG changed today as well. Flying in December, 2019. Would this be a new aircraft or a repurposed JOON?

I don't think Joon took delivery of theirs.

Maybe this is somewhat the "echo" of Joon. After all, Joon probably would have introduced a new cabin on this type (as their old cabin was quite bad). Then the high(er) density cabin makes sense. Maybe this product was already in development for Joon and then just ported over AF when Joon was discontinued. Or maybe this aircraft will get a higher density layout to replace older aircraft on the caribbean flights. Either way, the decision is pretty poor. I just wish Air France would take their cabin product a little bit more seriously and choose one seat as standard across the fleet (preferably the reverse herringbone) and just hurry up with the retrofitting already. Their wide array of different cabin products and the fact that after 10 years they still haven't repainted all airplanes in the new livery yet doesn't make them look consistent as a brand.