Air France Launching Airbus A350 With New Business Class to North America
Air France has announced its first North American route to feature its new Airbus A350. The aircraft will feature its new business class product and will fly daily nonstop to Toronto, beginning Nov. 25, 2019.
The aircraft features a new business class product with 34 Zodiac Optima seats in a 1-2-1 lie-flat configuration, similar to United's Polaris product. This means Air France now has numerous different premium products on different aircraft to North America. Here is TPG's review of its 1-2-1 reverse herringbone on Air France's Boeing 777-300ER from Paris to New York, and its 2-2-2 Airbus A330 from Paris to Houston.
The Toronto flight will operate on the following schedule:
- AF356 Paris (CDG) 2:15pm Departure ⇒ Toronto (YYZ) 4:45pm Arrival
- AF351 Toronto (YYZ) 6:45pm Departure ⇒ Paris (CDG) 8:15am (+1) Arrival
In addition to the business class cabin, Air France's A350 will feature 24 in seats in premium economy laid out in a 2-4-2 configuration and another 266 seats in a 3-3-3 layout in economy.
There is decent award availability showing for this flight. Since Air France is a SkyTeam carrier, you can use a number of mileage currencies to nab a seat. Using Air France's own Flying Blue program may yield the best search results — plus, you can transfer points from all the major credit card programs to Flying Blue. The standard cost is 60,000 miles each way in business class.
The Air France-KLM group has 28 A350-900s on order, with 21 to operate for Air France and the other seven in KLM colors.
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