La Compagnie’s Brand-New All-Business A321neo Enters Service Early
La Compagnie, the all-business-class airline that shuttles passengers between Newark (EWR) and France, took delivery of its first Airbus A321neo on Thursday. The plane was originally slated to enter service June 6, but already took to the skies for its first passenger flight.
The plane — registered F-HBUZ — is the first of two A321neo aircraft joining La Compagnie's fleet and the first to be operated by any French carrier. This is also La Compagnie's first jet to have fully lie-flat seats, a massive upgrade over the outdated angle-flat seats featured on its Boeing 757s.
The new cabin uses Collins Aerospace (formerly known as B/E Aerospace) Diamond seats arranged in a 2-2 configuration across 19 rows. These are the same seats you'll find in business class on American Airlines' A321T and most long-haul United planes that don't feature the new Polaris seats.
Every seat features 15.7" touchscreen entertainment and universal power outlets. The plane is also equipped with unlimited high-speed Wi-Fi courtesy of Viasat.
The plane is currently enroute from Paris (ORY) to Newark (EWR).
If you're looking to fly on the plane's first flight out of the US, there are seats available for its 7:00pm departure out of Newark tonight for $3,500 one-way or about $4,000 round-trip. Unfortunately, there aren't many ways to book award flights using miles as the airline isn't a part of an alliance or a transfer partner of any of the major points program.
If you don't have to be on the inaugural, you should be able to find much more reasonable fares. For instance, we're seeing fares for $1,300 round-trip between EWR and ORY most days in September. The airline also has somewhat frequent sales with fares as low as $998 round-trip.
For now, you'll find the new plane on the 7:00pm departure out of Newark (EWR) — flight B0 101 — and the 10:30am return from Paris (ORY) — flight B0 100. The airline recently introduced seasonal service to Nice (NCE), but those flights will be operated by the 757-200s. Stay tuned for a full TPG review, coming soon!
Featured rendering of Airbus A321neo courtesy of La Compagnie.
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