NEWS: Air France update – new business class “plus” suite and refits, new Heathrow Lounge plus food and wines

I recently attended an event in London to celebrate Air France’s 90th anniversary at the wine lounge, Decant and got to sample some of the wines and food from business class. It was also the first time I saw the new business class “plus” seats, which will be in the front row of their A350s. This has become quite a trend in the last few years, with Virgin and Jet Blue already offering larger business-class seats at the front of their cabins. 

I flew Air France long haul for the first time this year and was extremely impressed with the food and service. You can read my review here.

New business seats

The new business class seats are already flying, with the first A350 featuring the new seats launched in the summer of this year. A second A350 with new seats is also now flying.

The standard business class seats are suites with doors, and they will all be available on the new Airbus A350s that will join the company’s long-haul fleet between now and 2025. The A350 will feature new cabins across all travel classes with 48 Business seats, 32 Premium Economy seats and 212 Economy seats. In total, Air France has ordered 41 Airbus A350-900s, of which they have already received 20. Their primary focus for future aircraft is now the A220 and A350.

They will also be refitting 12 B777s with these new seats as well. This is due to start any day now. The new seats are now also now also earmarked for the Airbus A350-900s.

At the front of the cabin are larger seats which can be used as bassinets as well as for a standard passenger. These are substantially larger and felt very roomy when I tried it out.

The seats have Bluetooth headset pairing and wireless charging. You will notice that the pictures I took of the front row seats seem to have a small TV screen. The screens on the A350 are much bigger and at 20″ are the largest in the Air France fleet.

The screen shown above is from the B777 seats when they are refurbished. This will be 12″. Although it looks quite small against the larger seats due to the distance from the seat, it works fine in their normal business class seat. 

You can see more about the new standard business class seats in this article.

Lounges

Air France also made an announcement that they are looking at a new lounge for Heathrow. Currently, Air France and KLM customers have to use the Plaza Premium Lounge in T4 after the SkyTeam lounge closed permanently in 2021 when the lease ran out.

Air France is also aiming to open its own lounge in the Tom Bradley International Terminal of Los Angeles Airport. This is currently planned to be vast in size, with similar dimensions to the Amex Centurion Lounge (review coming soon). This comes after their new San Francisco lounge opened in the summer. 

Food and drink

Food and drink are very important parts of the Air France offering, and they pair with several Michelin-star chefs to bring the best experience to business and first class. There are more Michelin star partnerships coming with Canada, Singapore and the Caribbean in the works and Japan being next to find a suitable chef to work with. 

I was very impressed with the food when I flew with them. Wines are primarily French and change every two months. Unlike some airlines the wine list does not have a set format but tries to bring the best quality wines with perhaps a few more unusual offerings rather than just the standard Chablis etc. 

Here are the wines I sampled:

The wines are selected by award-winning sommelier, Paolo Basso. There were some great quality wines on the list but actually, my favourite was the Minervois which was slightly peppery and full-bodied with plenty of red fruit.