This French all-business-class airline offers 'cheap' private flights to New York

La Compagnie is an all-business-class airline that’s offering relatively inexpensive business class flights to New York.

They also fly to Sint Maarten’s Princess Juliana, the airport that’s famous for being super close to the beach.

With La Compagnie, you get business class service for the price of economy.

But there’s one major problem.

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Just like any other business class, but cheaper

When you book a La Compagnie flight, you get the full business-class experience.

You’ve got access lounge, comfy seats, premium dining, fancy amenity kits, and so on and so forth.

The difference is that every seat here is business; there are no economy seats.

By turning the whole plane into a business-class jet, La Compagnie is able to offer lower prices.

A (one-way) ticket to New York from Paris on Air France or American Airlines, for example, will set you back anywhere between $2,000 and $3,500.

By contrast, with this airline, you can easily spend around $1,000.

This, however, brings us on to the reasons why business-class-only airlines usually go out of business.

First, as a business model, it’s quite difficult to sustain because these airlines are often struggling in terms of revenue.

Second, flag carriers generally have the budget to undercut competition, which kind of removes the whole point of a business-class-only airline.

One of only two all-business-class airlines in the world

There are only two all-business-class airlines in the world, the other being BeOnd.

While La Compagnie flies to Nice, Princess Juliana Airport in Sint Maarten, Paris, and New York’s Newark, BeOnd is based out of Velana Airport in the Maldives and covers totally different destinations.

But these two airlines still have a lot in common.

Just like BeOnd, La Compagnie has a very small fleet with only two aircraft and, again, just like BeOnd, it uses Airbus planes that are ordinarily used by low-cost carriers.

The only difference is that BeOnd bought these planes used from EasyJet, while La Compagnie bought them new from Airbus.

Ordinarily, the A319 and the A321 can accommodate over 180 passengers, but both all-business-class airlines reduced that number significantly to prioritize comfort.

La Compagnie’s A321, for example, has 76 seats.

And this brings us back to the key issue.

Even in a best-case scenario, with all 76 seats sold, we’re looking at a revenue of around $80,000-$120,000 for a Paris-NYC flight, which is not necessarily enough to cover the (very high) fixed costs and turn a profit.

Still, La Compagnie has been in business for over a decade at this point, so things seem to be working out just fine for now.