Air France has unveiled its new flat bed business class seat. It's about time, given that KLM, part of the same company, announced its new flat bed seat in March 2013. What's strange is that the products are different. KLM's new business class, announced last year, is fully flat, but the window seats require climbing over your neighnor. Thankfully, Air France chose a better reverse herringbone product that gives every business class passenger full aisle access.
Of course, the basis of Air France's new business class, the flat bed reverse herringbone seat, has been around for 4 years and is used for Cathay Pacific Business Class, US Airways Envoy Class, EVA Business Class, and American's new business class on its 777-300ER.
Here are more details on Air France's new business class:
- Converts into a fully flat bed
- Duvet and feather down pillow
- Direct aisle access for each seat
- 16 inch high definition touch screen with entertainment available in 12 languages (English, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish)
- Noise reduction headphones
- USB port
Here are a few more photos, courtesy of Air France. All the white looks great in terms of lightening the cabin, but it also looks like a pain to keep clean, and may not age gracefully:
2102 new business class seats will be installed between June 2014 and mid-2016 on 44 of Air France's Boeing 777 aircraft. Unfortunately, this means that some of Air France's 777s will not be getting the new business class seat, and Air France hasn't announced what will be done for its A330, A340, A380 and 747 aircraft. I just hope that Air France's 777-200 LAX-PPT will get the new business class seats sooner rather than later–currently, there's no flat bed business class from the U.S. to Tahiti, so it would make a real difference for that market, even though the Air France flight isn't daily.
I also wouldn't be surprised if at least initially there aren't award seats released for the new business class seats, but we'll just have to see. Both AMEX Membership Rewards and SPG points transfer to Flying Blue, the frequent flyer program of Air France / KLM, and when transferring SPG points, you receive a 25% bonus when transferring in increments of 20,000 points (see Starwood Preferred Guest Airline Partners: Turn SPG Points into Miles).
You can also book Air France with Alaska Mileage Plan miles. See Alaska Airlines: New Online Award Search for Emirates, Air France-KLM, Qantas.
What do you think of the new Air France Business Class seats?
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