Interview: La Compagnie CEO on Why All-Business Class Airlines Can Work
Photo Credit: Most other entrepreneurs have given up on the all-business class model, but not La Compagnie. The all-business class airline now flies between Newark and Paris. La Compagnie
Skift Take
You have to give Frantz Yvelin some credit for thinking big, but the idea that an all-business class airline could work outside of a few of the largest financial centers in the world seems far-fetched. And even routes like London to New York aren't sure winners, as La Compagnie showed recently when it suspended flights.
Future of Passenger Experience
To better understand the challenges facing airlines in an age of fluctuating oil prices, rapid growth, and changing passenger expectations, our Future of Passenger Experience series will allow leaders in the industry to explain their best practices and insights.For the founder and CEO of an airline with two aircraft and one route — Paris to Newark —Frantz Yvelin definitely thinks big.
Yvelin founded all-business class airline LaCompagnie two years ago, and though he is only 39, this is his second start-up. The first was L'Avion, which he and his partners sold to British Airways in July 2008 — just before trans-Atlantic business class demand shrunk drastically during the global financial crisis. L'Avion was the only one of the all-premium class airlines of the early 2000s to survive, though it is now called OpenSkies, and its aircraft include a coach cabin.
The other airlines of that era — Eos, MaxJet, and SilverJet — are long gone, and today Yvelin is the only independent entrepreneur trying the model, with La Compagnie flying 74-seat Boeing 757s once or twice per day between Newark and Paris. Until September, La Compagnie also flew from London, but it canceled that route, with Yvelin blaming "uncertaint
