Skift Take
You may have seen Air France's new airline designed for millennials. But that's mostly a creation of marketers. Let's be honest. This is a lower-cost airline that needs to attract passengers of all ages if it's going to be successful.
When Air France's introduced its new lower-cost brand, Joon, over the summer, it promised the first airline designed for millennials, marketing it as a "fashion brand, a rooftop bar, an entertainment channel, a personal assistant," along with transportation.
Many bloggers and journalists mocked it. Gizmodo’s headline called it a “ridiculous airline for millennials” and poked fun at everything from the rooftop bar — “The bar does not seem to be on the roof of the airplane, but the plane itself will fly above all roofs" — to the entertainment channel, a standard system favored by airlines that don't want to install in-seat screens. The Telegraph called Joon, “France's bizarre new 'airline for millennials.'"
But in an interview last week in New York, Jean-Marc Janaillac, CEO of Air France-KLM, Air France's parent, described the startup slightly differently, saying the company created Joon less for travelers younger than 35, and more as an "economic necessity" to protect Air France from "fierce competition" from Gulf carriers and long-haul, low-cost airlines.
Soon after joining Air France-KLM in mid-2016 with a mandate to control costs, Janaillac said he realized Air France would need a fresh brand, similar to others launched by Air Canada, with Rouge, Lufthansa Group, with Eurowings, and International Airlines Group, owner of British Airways, with Level. All are spunkier than their airline parents.
"We thought it was good not to make a kind of Air France Blue or Air France White or whatever, but to have a different positioning," J
