Wow, I didn’t see this coming. All business class transatlantic airline La Compagnie has historically only flown between Newark States and France (Paris year-round, Nice seasonally), while the airline will now be expanding with two new routes. This follows the airline having been grounded for well over a year due to the pandemic.
Continue reading: Whoa: La Compagnie Launching Tel Aviv & Milan Flights
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Unrelated, but just got an Amex offer for 7 additional points/$ on Amazon (and Bestbuy too if anyone still goes there). Pretty great.
ORY-TLV seasonally makes perfect sense. COVID-aside, summer in Tel Aviv is always absolutely full of well-heeled French tourists. Add the connecting traffic from EWR and I can see this returning next year.
Worth noting that AF has also upgraded some CDG-TLV flights to widebody aircraft... they had been all A320/21 for years.
EWR-MXP is just weird. The NYC-MXP market isn't saturated, but it is well served (DL, AA, EK, UA..and AZ though it's not clear if that will actually continue).
Friendly reminder that La Compagnie has no back up plan if a plane breaks or something goes wrong. I had to spend thousands on a one-way economy American Airlines ticket to get back from Paris when the La Compagnie plane broke down. Apparently this happens a lot.
A great reminder as to why airlines like this are risky to book with. I had a similar issue with Norwegian a few years ago (long past the Dreamliner debacle). A network carrier has its pluses and minuses, but the ability to leverage alliance networks, their scale usually outweighs a niche carrier or disruptor, when things go wrong.
Oy Vey, menu suggestions;
Gefilte fish pate For appetizer, matzoh ball beef bourguignon for main, and Manischewitz Wine to wash it all down. Yummm
NYC-Paris is also well served. But it is not well served with a business class product at La Compagnie's price point.
The winter-only schedule does seem weird to me, though. I imagine that a good chunk of the airline's market consists of upper-middle-class tourists who don't want to pay $5000 per person for business class tickets for their families' vacations. Who vacations in Italy in winter?
La Compagnie now belongs to the Moulin Family (Galeries Lafayette Group). Hence the big pockets and the survival during the lockdown.
These people know how to make a business work and I am not surprised to see the expansion. Actually, we can probably expect more. Also, and I am not privy to any information, I fully expect them to make contingency plans for an Aircraft On Ground situation and for taking care of stranded passengers. That is how they operate.
There is significant business travel within the fashion industry between NYC and Milan and it tends to be more during the non-summer months.
I've seen a La Compagnie plane a week ago in Athens ... maybe they will serve this (I guess seasonally pretty interesting) market, too?
"Unfortunately one-way fares seem to be significantly more than half the cost of a roundtrip for now" Usually true. Not really worth saying.
Also, MXP is a good way north of Milan, and about 55 miles from the Matterhorn (as the helo flies). What's La Compagnie's policy on ski equipment?
Prior to COVID I traveled to London a few times a year, mostly DL or Skyteam. I want to fly La Campagnie and then hop a fly to London (I have done that in the past into CDG), but there never seemed to be any good flights to London. It seemed impossible to find direct (no Easy Jet or Ryan for me), or the pricing was much worse than CDG. Maybe I just was not doing the right search, but I never found a good way to get to London by flying them. Granted, they are not set up to be a feeder into London, but I would have liked to try them.
100%. Milan is the business/fashion capital of Italy. Lots of demand for J class, and it’s mostly not tourists. Those who are vacationing via MXP would most likely be going in the winter for skiing (as bubba says below).
Very very few Americans have Milan on their “summer Italy vacation bucket list”. There’s so many better cities to visit, and more direct service was coming to some of those pre-COVID (Venezia, Napoli, Palermo, and of course Roma-Fiumicino. AA even tried Bologna, no?)