La Compagnie's Growth Strategy Is All Over The Place

One of the main reasons their London route never reached high loads was because they chose Luton as their base. Business travellers don’t want to travel to Luton. It’s as simple as that. Leisure pax paying for what is essentially a Y+ product also don’t want to travel to Luton. They should have stumped up the extra landing fees and got a slot at Gatwick. Pax could bare an extra, say $50 per ticket if the flight left and arrived at Gatwick rather than Luton.
One thing I have NEVER understood about this airline is if they are never expecting to reach 100% loads with 74 angled flat seats of 62” each (so 1240” in 19.5 rows of 2-2), why not install fully-flat seats that take up a bit more room and just have a few rows less? Looking at BA’s all-Business fully-flat 2-2 A318 seats as a comparison, they take up 72” each. They could (just) fit 17.5 rows of fully flat BA seats, so, 2 rows less than now, so 8 seats less. 8 seats removed is 10.8% of the current load factor, meaning at their current 85% load factor on Paris routes, they could have fully-flat seats and STILL have seats empty!

As Ben sait honestly I think Luton was the reason London - New York didn't work. It's just so far out, it's far from practical for the business class traveller. The reason it works with Paris is they fly out of CDG, if thet flew out of Beauvais Airport I'm pretty sure their load factors would be quiet different.
I really hope they come around and get their new plane with new full flat seats, because for the niche spot they are trying to fill in, they have potential yet they dont seem to be sticking to what works...

"they could easily charge higher fares if they had fully flat beds"

I - someone who has actually bought tickets on La Compagnie - would not pay higher fares for flat bed seats. The whole point of their product is to make business class affordable. For a 7 or 8 hour flight, I don't need a flat bed seat and would probably just fly economy of La Compagnie got any more expensive than it is (roughly $1600 rt, or $1400 on sale).

Was at EWR the other day and happened to pass by their gate. Looked like a mix of families and business types. I see them advertising all over the place these days (maybe i'm just getting targeted from reading your blog) and if i were to go to Paris I would highly consider them. While their business model may be tough, I think there is a market for this J- class (hate to call it Y+ since it beats most Y+ i've seen/flown) and market segmentation is alwaysa good thing

It most definitely beats Y+. The best Y+ I've flown is Turkish, and that was pretty miserable for a 12 hr flight. The seat reclines a bit more then in regular Y, but not enough to really be comfortable. The La Compagnie seat, on the other hand, is more like a Barcalounger - actually better, because it reclines even farther.

I don't know, maybe it would be better if they flew more US-CDG rather than EWR-Europe routes which could get them in a Norwegian type of situation....

As someone who used them frequently i miss the U.K. route. It was hardly 50% full on any flight I took. The Luton airport was perfect as I travel north so it shaved an hour + off driving and could be out of the airport in 15 mins.
Newark is much worse an airport than Luton. Maybe Manchester/Leeds would have been a better airport to capture those willing to shell out more particularly families (unfortunately). Another option would be to make it adult-only, there's definitely a market for child-avoiding flights!

So, the CEO cannot disclose the exact number of passes sold, but it's "most of them" but not 10.

So, it's 6,7,8, or 9, and revealing the exact number is so propietary that it can't possibly be shared.

Right, because United (revenue $38 Billion) and AA (revenue $41 billion) are doing all they can to find out which side of $100 k the company got for the passes.

I'm looking forward to flying with them in the near future but I have no idea when. I'm based in Australia so if a Asia to Europe trip was available I'd go.

Lie-flat seats... on a longer 10+ plus flight yes, pre AF J class update had the angle seats... they were OK but once you've flown flat (SQ/VAus/EY) it's much preferred on a longer 12-14 hour flight.

Best Y+ in my opinion is CX, and this looks miles ahead of that. Without having flown La Compagnie, there product looks more like a J- than a Y+.

there=their, obviously

It's a J- that, 10-15 years ago, would have been J, and 20-25 years ago would have been J++.

I was really quite pleased with it, which is why I'm fanboying away here, but realistically I doubt their business model is the slightest bit viable. I give them another year max - less if oil prices spike.

There's a premium/business travel market for NYC-GVA given the heavy UN and banking presence in both places, so that may actually be a viable strategy.