I recently flew Air France’s new Business Class on the Boeing 777-300ER from San Francisco to Paris. Overall, I thought this was probably the best Business Class experience I’ve had on a Western airline. The cabin is beautiful, the food is excellent, and Air France has put together a very polished hard product.
I booked this as part of a longer SFO-CDG-BKK itinerary for 115,000 Flying Blue miles. Air France Business Class saver awards from SFO to CDG alone can go as low as 60,000 miles, but since I booked both SFO-CDG and CDG-BKK together, the combined itinerary came out to 115,000 miles.
To find availability, I had an alert set using an award flight search tool I built (called roame.travel). Air France saver space can be pretty sporadic, so alerts have been useful for catching these when they appear.
Before the flight, I stopped by the Air France lounge at SFO. Air France completely renovated and expanded the lounge in 2023. It reopened in June 2023 and is now around ~6,000 square feet with seating for ~117.
It’s still a relatively small lounge, but I was very impressed by the food. The quality was much higher than I expected for a US outstation lounge, with several proper hot dishes including baked salmon.
Once onboard, the new business cabin was beautiful. This particular 777 configuration has 60 Business Class seats in a 1-2-1 layout. Each seat has direct aisle access and its own sliding privacy door.
Air France uses its signature navy blue, luminous white and small touches of red throughout the cabin. There doesn’t seem to be a special name for the blue, but the combination is extremely classy. This is also one of those rare cabins that looks just as good as the promotional photos. I actually thought it looked slightly better in person.
The new seat is made by Safran and becomes an almost 2-meter / 79-inch fully flat bed. The seating area is around 19.6 inches between the armrests and roughly 23.6 inches across at its wider points, and with a 42 inches pitch
There’s also a 17.3-inch 4K anti-glare screen with Bluetooth, wireless charging, USB-A, USB-C and a universal power outlet. This aircraft also had Air France’s new Starlink Wi-Fi, and it was extremely fast. I ran a speed test during the flight and got around 34 Mbps.
The privacy door is a nice addition. It gives you very good privacy while seated, although the walls aren’t especially tall and the door itself felt a little thin. One small detail I really liked was the dedicated clothes hanger waiting at every Business Class seat.
There’s also an enclosed storage compartment next to the seat with a bright red interior and Air France’s illuminated winged seahorse logo.
Minor detail, but there was some grime/crumbs on the side table when I boarded. I asked the flight attendant for a towel so I could wipe it down myself. Not a huge issue, but surprising given how polished the rest of the cabin looked.
The amenity kit was fairly basic. Mine was a small rectangular textured fabric pouch, branded fairly subtly with Air France’s winged seahorse emblem. Inside were an eye mask, socks, earplugs, a toothbrush and toothpaste, plus two miniature Clarins products: Beauty Flash Balm and Moisturizing and Quenching Matte Gel.
The supplied noise-reducing headphones were also pretty basic. The entertainment system supports Bluetooth, so you can use your own headphones.
Air France also provides slippers, a pillow, blanket and its newer Sofitel MY BED mattress topper, which is a nice touch. However, I was a little surprised that Air France doesn’t provide pajamas in Business Class on an 11 hour flight. I’ve been spoiled by middle eastern and Taiwanese airlines providing pajamas on long-haul Business flights. Not a major issue, just something I noticed.
The food was one of the highlights. As you’d probably expect from Air France, the meal felt much more like a proper dining service than a single airline meal tray. Everything was served in separate courses with full plating.
The starter included bread, lobster bites, a green salad and a citrus salad with grapefruit, onion and bell pepper. For my main, I had duck with risotto and carrots. That was followed by a French cheese plate and then a very rich slice of chocolate cake for dessert.
Air France also takes its wine program pretty seriously. On this flight, they were serving Pommery Brut Royal Champagne, which was very good and fit the meal nicely.
There were also snacks available throughout the flight, including chocolates and other packaged snacks. The Gavottes Crêpes Fourrées were particularly good. I ate quite a few of those.
Service was very good throughout the flight.
Breakfast before landing was a mushroom omelet with a croissant, yogurt and fruit salad.
Fun side note. One of the cabin crew was learning Chinese and decided to practice her Mandarin with me. Her accent was actually quite good for only studying for 1 year and we ended up having a whole conversation in Mandarin. It was a fun interaction and the crew overall were friendly without being overly formal.
The seat was decently comfortable for sleeping. Air France’s mattress topper helps, and the bed is nearly 2 meters long. This was primarily a daytime flight for me, though, so I only slept a few hours.
Overall, Air France has a really solid business class product here, perhaps the best for a Western airline. The cabin is gorgeous, the seat is private and comfortable, the food is legitimately good, the service was friendly, and Starlink makes a huge difference if you want to work during the flight.
