Air France expands 777 first class network

Hong Kong heads up the list of cities to be graced by Air France’s elegant La Première first class this year, as the SkyTeam member taps into Asia’s appetite for premium travel. 

“We’re going to expand the footprint (of the La Première network) by 50%, adding more aircraft to the fleet with La Première cabins” says Air France-KLM CEO Benjamin Smith.

“We’re going to add more services to Asia: we’ll go to Hong Kong and perhaps we’ll see how Tel Aviv goes, maybe one or two more in the Middle East,” said Smith, speaking on a recent Monocle podcast.

“But if you look at the major GDP cities of our long-haul network, you can pick the next five or 10. The destinations we announce won’t be a surprise.”

Air France's new 777 La Premiere first class.

The new La Première first class suites, which debuted in March 2025, carefully finessed the understated design of their forerunner.

At over three metres, each of the four first class suites on each Boeing 777 is the longest in the sky, spanning five windows on the Boeing 777 (up from four windows in today’s suites) with a generous 3.5m² footprint.

Developed in partnership with France’s Stelia Aerospace, the new 777 La Première suites have a separate armchair and bed – or rather, a chaise longue which reclines into a 2m long, 75cm wide bed.

Air France's new 777 La Premiere first class.

“We want it to be a soft feel, but private,” Smith reflected, with soundproof curtains rather than walls to give “a little bit more of a cocoon-type feel.”

Doubling down on first class was not an easy decision to make, especially given the high cost of both the ground component and “the amount of real estate it takes up” on the plane itself.

“When I arrived here at Air France-KLM in 2018, we were losing a ton of money with La Première, and there were a lot of people that wanted to pull it.”

“And one of the reasons is business class was getting so much better, so it was more difficult for our customers to justify paying a premium when what business class was offering was excellent.”

Air France's new 777 La Premiere first class.

But Smith chose instead to lean into what the first class experience could be.

“One of the inspirations around the new product was, how could we make the experience as close to a private jet feel as possible from the moment you walk in the terminal to when you get off the plane.”

This spans from a private check-in facility at Air France’s Paris CDG hub to a first class lounge with three self-contained apartments, an à la carte dining room and Sisley day spa.

One of the private suites in the La Premiere lounge.

“You’re totally apart from the general customer experience. And then when you’re on board, we don’t have eight seats, we don't have 14 seats like some of our competitors. We have four.”

Smith said the response from passengers has “been much better than any of our expectations.”

But beyond the rarefied realm of first class, “we want Air France to be positioned by far as the number one airline in Europe, in every cabin. And I think we can get there.”