Many airlines have regional brands that are closely connected to their larger 'mainline' brand. Qantas has QantasLink, Lufthansa has Lufthansa Regional, KLM has KLM Cityhopper, etc. These regional brands usually operate smaller aircraft than their mainline parent, both because there is less demand on the routes they fly, and less need to provide the full…
Continue reading: Air France Renaming Regional Airline, ‘HOP!’
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Still said Hop! For Air France however seems Ben Smith is doing a good job here The difference between Klm
City hopper and Air France is that everything is focussed on one airport - Schiphol. The country is much smaller. France has multiple airports and 4 x the population Lyon is not an Air France hub however hip operates regional services on behelf of AF. No difference from delta connection etc
The Joon brand was far more confusing and unnecessary. Hop is clearer
I've often wondered why they don't just call it by the same name as the mainline carrier. Most folks know that if you want to visit Yosemite from Hong Kong, you'd book United HKG-FAT and you're going to fly mainline United to SFO then United Express to FAT. I always presumed it was for business, tax, or liability/insurance purposes given that most of the regional arms rely solely or mostly on contracted carriers. But if pax purchase tickets through the same website or ticket office and fly on mainline flight numbers in aircraft with general mainline branding, why confuse the issue with different names in the first place.
@AR. Hop is a separate company Although owned by AF Likewise the connection carriers operate on behalf of mainline carriers. Eg Skywest and are separate companies with their own staff and contracts
@Icarus:
For sure - the operating on behalf of mainline carriers I get; lots of family working for SkyWest actually, and flying for UA and DL. Just seems a stupid move of the mainline carriers to not even include the mainline name in the first place. Like Dragonair and Hop! Oh well.
HOP! serves the airport at Castries, located an hour's drive from our house in southern France. Our French neighbors and friends all understand the regional carrier is actually Air France and frankly I've long wondered why management doesn't just call drop the HOP! name and paint the smaller planes in Air France's livery. I'm guessing the HOP! name allows Air France to hire workers without having to pay them AF salaries.
@AR however they do ? Dragonair rebranded as Cathay dragon and in the same livery but red
Hop has Air France written on the aircraft. KLM city hopper
American eagle , delta connection
.. same corporate branding with a decal confirming the operating carrier
When you book online it will have the mainline code and a note confirming the operating carrier. Eg LAX - Phoenix operates by compass air in delta livery
Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Limited DBA Cathay Dragon (previously Dragonair), it and Cathay Pacific are two separated entities. They are exactly two different companies.
Cathay Dragon and HOP are in different situations since Cathay Dragon can fly international routes.
Cathay got Dragonair through an acquisition… and after a very long merger process eventually brought in inline and rebranded it as Cathay Dragon. So it's a bit of a different situation.
James you completely the missed the main reason why legacy mainline carriers have branded regional/express services operated by separate companies....it's all about the pilots, their seniority and the unions. Lucky had a good post about this a few years back. Though his examples are all NA based the setup equally applies to EU carriers too:
https://onemileatatime.com/regional-airlines/
I'm not sure about this change. CX and SIA reintegrated their names into their regional brands because they don't pretend that the main brands should remain high-end and exclusive. On the contrary, Mr. Smith has a very visible and explicite strategy of pushing Air France high up there, by extravagantly spending money on des-densifying some current 10 seaters to 9 seaters. Doesn't he worry HOP! would affect the precious luxurious brand image he's decided to adopt for Air France? Spending money and making unreasonable compromises to work unions were easy solutions, not perfect ones. His aurora allowed him to convince the capital market to support all the recent moves but they created larger potential risks to Air France. Last year AF's performance was actually, despite of all the union troubles. So even it continues to better, we can't exclude the possibility of an existing and continuous momentum, not of good deeds of Mr. Smith himself.