Air France A350-900 business class PARIS–TORONTO

BACKGROUND

Air France received its first A350-900 in September 2019 and is set to take delivery of five more by the end of 2020. The first routes to be served were Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Bamako (Mali), Toronto and, from December 9, Cairo and Seoul. I was on the inaugural flight to Toronto on October 27. The aircraft is fitted with the carrier’s new business class seat.

CHECK-IN

I connected from Heathrow to flight AF356, which leaves Paris Charles de Gaulle at 1415 and arrives in Toronto at 1645, about an eight-hour 30-minute journey. It was a 15-minute walk and train ride to the L gates and the flight was on time.

BOARDING

I boarded early to shoot some footage of the new seat. The cabin seemed spacious, with overhead lockers above both the window and centre seats. There was a plastic hanger for your jacket on every seat with rotating numbers and letters to spell out your seat number (in my case 3C).

THE SEAT

The aircraft has 324 seats – 266 in economy, 24 in premium economy and 34 in business class. It should be noted that the business seat, while new on this aircraft, will probably only feature on 10 of the 28 A350s being delivered to Air France over the next six years, and that somewhere around number 11 there will be a change to an as-yet-undecided product. People grumble about the number of business class seats Air France has, but as long as they all recline to fully flat overnight, it’s a rather high-class gripe to have. Having said that, Air France still has some older angled lie-flat seats, including on the A380, which is to be retired by 2022.