Here’s a look at a recent Affaires Business Class offering from Air France (2011) for this installment of Amenity Kit Reviews. For a better description of each category and the 7-point scale for scoring, please review my introductory post.
Bag/Container: The exterior of the padded case is rich milk chocolate in color with metallic gold hues when held in light. Air France’s logo is embossed on the lower right edge of the leather (or pleather) magnetic snap closure flap. Inside, you’ll find a tiny main section along with two small polyester mesh pockets. The textured canvas on the edges and interior flap is a nice touch, but it basically looks like a woman’s evening handbag. And with its limited capacity, reusability is low. Score: 3
Skin Care: This will be quick as there’s simply a single tube of Clarins “Multi-Active Day†early wrinkle correction cream. It’s fine, though has a strong unidentifiable odor and actually would cause me to tear if I moisturized my crow’s feet. 😉 I’ll assume there’s proper hand lotion in the lavatories. With that, I’m rather unimpressed. Score: 2
Oral Care: The kit contains your standard soft-bristled short-handled toothbrush with a cover, along with a tube of Sunstar, non-flavored toothpaste that contained just enough for a single use. I remain unimpressed to this point. Score: 3
Comfort Items: This category gets slightly more interesting as the kit includes a bit more here to appease my critical review format. The one size fits all eyeshades are rather tight, but they get the job done. As do the basic, low-quality single use socks and earplugs. Air France does, however, provide a few extras in this category, including a shoehorn, comb, headphone “bonnet†covers and a “do not disturb†sticker. I very much like the inclusion of a drawstring shoe bag. Score: 5
Intangibles: Beyond the gorgeous coloring and extras in the comfort category, the kit completely underwhelmed. It feels like Air France went a little cheap on several of the items. Also, as a branding dork, I would like to have seen the Air France logo appear on the comb or shoehorn, perhaps, along with maybe a SkyTeam alliance plug somewhere. Score: 2
Total score & comments:
I think a result of 3.15 is generous given my stringent scoring requirements. It’s a pretty meager international business class offering compared to many I’ve reviewed.
Related posts:
Have you ranked LH Business Class.. I was shocked to see the amenity kit… i will not even give it a 1….extremely poor quality
@Naif: No, I haven’t ranked LH’s Business kit… don’t currently have one!
It seems like most european carriers have cheap amenity kits in C (except BA). They are even worser than the US carriers (PMUA the mesh bag was quite bad too, but now it had significantly improved) LH is even worse, their F kit is just like the C kit, gents only have handcreme not even lipbalm ! (though some reports Rimowa case is back, but not consistant, still the contents are pretty cheap and barebone)
@ORDnHKG: Yeah, I wish more airlines took after the Asian carriers… well… except SQ Business… no amenity kit!