Air France La Premiere 777

4/11/2022by admin

Air France La Premiere 777 Rating: 3,5/5 4591 reviews

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Air France has the unique distinction of being the only airline — out of the 13 to operate the double decker Airbus A380 — where premium cabin passengers should actively avoid the superjumbo jet. While the airline’s A380 first class features the same “La Première” branding as its 777-300ER, the A380 also features a pathetically outdated first and business class cabin. The A380 La Première cabin lacks privacy, modernity and, in many ways, effort.

The same cannot be said of the exclusive first class found on Air France’s 777-300ERs. This product often gets overlooked because of how hard it is to book with miles, so today we’re clearing the air and taking an in-depth look at the Boeing 777 that might just feature SkyTeam’s most luxurious first class.

Routes

Air France has 43 777-300ERs in its fleet, though not all of them feature a first class cabin. That being said, you can still find La Première flying to some pretty interesting destinations around the world. Unfortunately, the list of destinations on the official La Première website is out of date, with several routes only receiving this premium service seasonally, once or twice a week, or not at all.

As of now, you can fly in La Première comfort from Paris (CDG) to the following cities:

North America:

San Francisco (SFO)
Los Angeles (LAX)
New York (JFK)
Houston (IAH)
Washington DC (IAD)
Miami (MIA)
Mexico City (MEX)

South America:

Air France First Class

Sao Paulo (GRU)

Middle East:

Beirut (BEY)
Dubai (DXB)

Africa:

Yaounde, Cameroon (NSI)
Luanda, Angola (LAD)
Libreville, Gabon (LBV)

Asia:

Beijing (PEK)
Shanghai (PVG)
Hong Kong (HKG)
Singapore (SIN)

While there isn’t as much to do in La Première as, say, an Emirates A380 first class cabin, you’ll ideally want to pick one of the longer routes to fully experience the product. Flights to Beirut (BEY) and Dubai (DXB) are well under 7 hours, and even a transatlantic redeye might feel short given the premium in either money or miles it’ll cost to get you into a La Première seat.

Cabin Layout and Seat Selection

777s simply don’t offer as much space to innovate as an oversized A380, and with the exception of Emirates’ new 777 suite and Cathay Pacific first class, most airlines offer a relatively similar 1-2-1 layout. But there’s nothing “normal” about La Première. While the cabin is arranged in the common 1-2-1 configuration, Air France puts only one row of first class where most airlines put 2-3. This gives the four-seat cabin an incredibly private feeling.

Each seat is 24 inches wide with 79 inches of pitch and, of course, reclines to a fully flat bed.

While I haven’t had the chance to try it myself, TPG looked like he had plenty of room to stretch out when he flew La Première from Paris (CDG) to New York (JFK).

But it’s not just the exclusivity of the cabin that makes it so appealing — it’s the chic, thoroughly French design. From the individual lamp at every seat to the floor-to-ceiling curtains, La Première is a treat for the eyes. Couples will obviously want the pair of seats in the middle, but don’t worry if you find yourself seated next to a stranger, as there’s a large privacy partition between the seats that can be raised. However, if you’re traveling solo, try to get a window seat for maximum privacy.

Of course, you’ll get all the standard first class goodies, including pajamas, an amenity kit and (it really wouldn’t be Air France without it…) some high end champagne.

As the cherry on top, Air France offers one of the most well rounded ground services for La Première passengers departing Paris. The experience includes a chauffeur across the tarmac to the side of your plane, as well as plenty of fine dining options in the lounge if you’re looking to ruin your appetite before the main event.

How to Book

If all these photos have brought your expectations up to 38,000 feet, now’s the time to reign them back in. As aspirational as La Première is, it’s nearly impossible to book with miles. There are three main reasons for this:

Air France doesn’t release any first class award space to partner programs.
Even within the Air France/KLM Flying Blue program, only elite members are allowed to redeem for first class.
Flying Blue elites can only redeem at the “flex” level (i.e. not saver), meaning a one-way ticket between the US and Europe will cost 200,000 miles.

As of March 2018, Flying Blue was not offering status match or status challenge options, but if you’re a regular SkyTeam flier, you can earn Flying Blue elite status by crediting your travel there. Flying Blue overhauled its loyalty program — including switching to revenue-based earning — at the end of 2017. Elite status is now determined by how many “experience points” or XP you earn. For example, the lowest tier, Silver, requires 100 XP.

You earn XP for Air France/KLM and SkyTeam flights at the following rates:

While this obviously won’t work for everyone, two round-trip business class tickets between the US and Europe or Asia on any SkyTeam partner should be enough to qualify for Flying Blue Silver status. From there, simply transfer 200,000 points from any of the transferable points currencies — Flying Blue is a 1:1 partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards, and a 3:1 transfer partner of Marriott — and La Première can be yours! However, depending on which currency you transfer to Flying Blue, you’ll probably be spending about ~$4,000 worth of points for a one-way ticket, so make sure this flight really means that much to you.

The other option to consider is using one of the two credit cards that offer solid value when you redeem points directly for flights — either the Chase Sapphire Reserve or The Business Platinum® Card from American Express OPEN. The Sapphire Reserve gives you a 50% bonus on redeemed points — making them worth 1.5 cents each — while the Business Platinum features a 35% Pay with Points rebate when you use points to pay for a first or business class flight on any airline.

However, while these improved redemption rates are useful, they’ll only get you so far against the laughably absurd cash prices of a first class ticket. As an example, the cheapest La Première round-trip fare I could find between New York and Paris was $6,090, and the cheapest one-way fare was $8,000+.

If you were to pay for a round-trip entirely with Ultimate Rewards points from a CSR at 1.5 cents per point, it would come to 406,000 points, or just slightly more than the 200,000 points Flying Blue would charge in each direction. You could wait for a fare sale, but the last time La Première prices were cheap enough to be exciting, it turned out to be a mistake fare and most of the tickets were cancelled by Air France.

Bottom Line

Between the intimate four-seat cabin and aggressive restrictions on award bookings, Air France’s La Première on its 777-300ER aircraft remains one of the most exclusive first class products. While I’d love to try it one day, the only way I see that happening is if there’s a massive fare sale at exactly the same time that I’m sitting on a few hundred thousand Ultimate Rewards points. Until then, I’ll keep focusing on good value redemptions,instead of overpaying for a flight that will probably last less than 10 hours.

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The Boeing 777 just turned an important milestone: 25 years from its first commercial flight. The story that began on June 7, 1995, when United Airlines flew its first 777 from Washington Dulles to Paris, has turned out to be one the great successes in commercial aviation. The Triple Seven is now the best-selling wide-body airplane ever, and it’s second only to the ubiquitous 737 as the best-selling Boeing jet.

With so many of them around, it’s no surprise that they should appear frequently, and prominently, in our coverage of aviation. The best long-haul first class in the world, according to the TPG Awards? It’s Air France’s La Premiere, at the front end of a 777. And the best business class? Also found on 777s, it’s Qatar Airways’ Qsuite. What about the best premium economy? That was on Virgin Australia’s 777s. Then you have the dazzlling suites in Emirates first class and ANA business — both on 777s.

That dominance of the Triple Seven is no chance. The plane may not have the aviation-history charm of the 747, but it has largely taken its place in the world’s airline fleets because of its better economics.

Air France La Premiere B777

A technical marvel, the the world’s biggest twinjet — powered by the most powerful engines in the history of aviation — does almost everything the 747 can, but cheaper. Thanks to its huge belly holds, it has also been pulling double duty as a cargo carrier, after airlines found themselves almost without passengers due to the coronavirus.

Like many frequent flyers, my personal story with the 777 goes way back: my first ride in a Triple Seven was in the early 2000s in a Delta bird from Atlanta to Paris. I’ve logged hundreds of thousands of miles on the 777 since, without a hitch — the plane has an excellent safety record — but with many memorable moments, none more so than the first time I flew in a 777 cockpit.

In a bid to impress my girlfriend while flying from New York to Rome in 2006, I asked a friend who happened to be an Alitalia captain if he might be able to ask his colleague commanding our flight to let us peek into the flight deck. Not only did we peek: we sat in it, as our plane cruised toward Spain and the captain sipped an espresso — because of course Italy’s flag carrier has espresso machines on board. You’ll see the navigation map and coffee cup on the left of the image.

Clearly the flight-deck visit (and a dazzling display of the Northern Lights from our business-class windows) worked as intended, because the following year we found ourselves headed to Rome again — for our wedding. On a 777, of course. And because by then Alitalia knew us, we got another cockpit visit. I snapped this photo of the displays, showing us at 39,000 feet over Italy, 36.3 nautical miles from our next waypoint over the Genoa airport. Almost there!

During a tarmac tour of JFK in 2004, I had seen one of those Alitalia 777s from up close, too. Little did I know that one of them would fly me to my own wedding just three years later.

Over the years, I got close looks at many more 777s doing interesting things, like this Virgin Australia 777-300ER landing in Moses Lake — a huge and semi-deserted airport in Washington state — at the end of what was probably its very first flight, fresh from the factory. Boeing often sends brand-new planes to Moses Lake on their first test flight, and that day in 2009 I happened to be there with a camera.

A couple years later, the Italian newspaper I was working for sent me to that Boeing factory to report on the first delivery of a 787 to a customer. Boeing threw in a tour of the Everett assembly line for the journalists, and that’s when I saw a 777-300ER being built for Emirates. Still unpainted, it showed clearly how aluminum skin panels are riveted onto the frame, and how modern aircraft manufacturing is a highly computerized process, with monitors sitting right by the fuselage.

The 777 holds another distinction for me: it’s the only airplane I’ve flown in all four classes. Several of those flights have been for TPG reviews, like one my most unusual inflight experiences, a Kuwait Airways long-haul trip in first class from Dubai to New York via Kuwait City and Shannon. The seat was a great enclosed suite that could have been a contender for one of the best inflight products in the world. The service and soft product were, let’s say, not on par with the seat.

In business class, on the other hand, I had one of the best flights of my life on an EVA Air 777 from Seattle to Taipei. From exquisite attention to detail to near-perfect service and outstanding food, it was a delight. No wonder we think EVA is an underrated gem.

Premium economy on Aeroflot from Moscow to New York stayed with me more for the exceptional inflight entertainment system than for the hard-shell seat.

Economy class on Air France from Boston to Paris stood out for one unpleasant detail: the dirty state of the aircraft.

All in all, though, my encounters with the Triple Seven have been an aviation-geek delight. One time, taking off from Newark, I spotted ahead of us in the takeoff queue the OG 777: the United bird that started it all with that first flight to Paris, easily identifiable by its tail number, N777UA. It’s still going strong today, doing domestic runs all over the United States.

I owe 777s two of my favorite aviation photographs, as well. One was taken on a flight from Singapore to Seoul aboard a Korean Air 777-300ER, as the full moon hung below our left wing. While my fellow passengers in Korean’s excellent coach class slept unaware of the wonder outside their windows, I took frame upon frame until I finally got the exposure I wanted. The 777’s rock-solid ride helped avoid any camera shake.

And one summer evening on the ground, at Bayswater Park in New York City, I spent hours waiting for the setting sun, a fisherman’s boat and a plane landing at JFK to all line up just so. When it finally happened, the star of the shot was a Triple Seven.

All photos by the author.

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Air France La Premiere 777

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