La Compagnie, legally incorporated as DreamJet SAS, is a French

boutique airline A boutique airline is an airline that differentiates from the competition through unique customer experience and personalization. Description In the same way as boutique hotels, boutique airlines are equally appropriate for business and vacatio ...

founded by Frantz Yvelin and based at

Orly Airport Paris Orly Airport (french: Aéroport de Paris-Orly), commonly referred to as Orly , is one of two international airports serving the French capital, Paris, the other one being Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG). It is located partially in Orly ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, with headquarters in

Le Bourget Le Bourget () is a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. The commune features Le Bourget Airport, which in turn hosts the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace (Air and Space Museum). A very ...

in the

Paris metropolitan area The Paris metropolitan area (french: aire d'attraction de Paris) is a statistical area that describes the reach of commuter movement to and from Paris, France and its surrounding suburbs. Overview In 2020 France's national INSEE statistica ...

. It offers all-

business class Business class is a travel class available on many commercial airlines and rail lines, known by brand names which vary, by airline or rail company. In the airline industry, it was originally intended as an intermediate level of service between ...

flights between Europe and Newark Liberty International Airport.

History

La Compagnie was founded as DreamJet in 2013. It was created and run by French Airline Entrepreneur Frantz Yvelin, with the support of Peter Luethi, Yann Poudoulec, Francois Ledreux, Nicolas Jurczyk, and Pierre-Hugues Schmit among a few others, in the hopes of making an all-business class airline with a true low-cost structure, offering business class fares significantly cheaper than those of

legacy carrier A legacy carrier, in the United States, is an airline that had established interstate routes before the beginning of the route liberalization permitted by the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and so was directly affected by that Act. Legacy carr ...

s. Frantz Yvelin served as the airline's CEO for its first four years, until the end of 2016. Prior to La Compagnie, Frantz Yvelin was also the founder of

L'Avion Elysair SAS, operating as L'Avion (French for "The plane"), was an airline headquartered in Paray Vieille Poste, France, near Wissous. It operated business class-only long-haul service between Orly Airport, Paris and Newark Liberty Internationa ...

, which was sold to

British Airways British Airways (BA) is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in London, England, near its main hub at Heathrow Airport. The airline is the second largest UK-based carrier, based on fleet size and passengers ...

and later became

OpenSkies OpenSkies was a French airline owned by International Airlines Group (IAG) which operated under the Level brand prior to closing down, and before that operated under its own brand name. Its headquarters were located in Rungis, near Paris. ...

. Yvelin's deputy was Peter Luethi, the former COO of Indian airline

Jet Airways Jet Airways (India) Ltd is an Indian airline based in Delhi NCR, with a training and developmental center in Mumbai. Incorporated in April 1992 as a limited liability company, the airline began operations as an air taxi operator in 1993. It b ...

. The first scheduled revenue flight, already under the new name La Compagnie (English: ''The Company''), operated from

Charles de Gaulle Airport Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (french: Aéroport de Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, ), also known as Roissy Airport or simply Paris CDG, is the principal airport serving the French capital, Paris ( and its metropolitan area), and the largest intern ...

to Newark Liberty International Airport on 21 July 2014 using a Boeing 757-200. On 24 April 2015, the airline started a second scheduled route from

London Luton Airport London Luton Airport is an international airport located in Luton, Bedfordshire, England, situated east of the town centre, and north of Central London. The airport is owned by London Luton Airport Ltd (LLAL), a company wholly owned by ...

to Newark. In April 2016, Frantz Yvelin announced La Compagnie was considering a fleet renewal and expansion with

Airbus A321neo The Airbus A320neo family is a development of the A320 family of narrow-body airliners produced by Airbus. The A320neo family (''neo'' for "new engine option") is based on the previous A319, A320 and A321 ( enhanced variant), which was then ren ...

aircraft, which it had later confirmed with an order for two Airbus A321neos in September 2017. In September 2016, the airline announced the suspension of its route from London Luton to Newark and its intention to instead launch a second daily frequency between Paris Charles de Gaulle and Newark, citing economic reasons linked to

Brexit Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC ...

. In December 2016, La Compagnie's sole holding, DreamJet Participations, which was also founded and run by Frantz Yvelin, acquired 100% of XL Group Ltd., the holding company of

XL Airways France XL Airways France was a French airline with its head offices on the grounds of Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. It operated scheduled flights mainly to long-haul destinations in Africa, the Middle East, the United States and the Caribbean as wel ...

, and the two airlines joined forces with the transaction completed by 12 September 2018. In September 2017, the airline announced that it was offering all-you-can-fly passes for its Newark to Paris route, costing $40,000 per year. In April 2018, La Compagnie relocated its Paris operations from

. On 5 December 2018, the airline announced a new seasonal service to

Nice Côte d'Azur Airport Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (french: link=no, Aéroport Nice Côte d'Azur) is an international airport located southwest of Nice, in the Alpes-Maritimes ''départment'' of France. It is the third busiest airport in France and serves as a foc ...

from Newark to begin on 6 May 2019. Also in May 2019, the airline took delivery of its first

. In September 2019, the airline took delivery of its second Airbus A321neo, and subsequently retired both of its Boeing 757 aircraft by the end of October 2019. In March 2020, La Compagnie announced it would suspend its commercial operations as of the 18th of that month due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. Commercial operations were initially expected to resume on 1 June 2020, but were subsequently postponed several times. During the suspensions, the airline received a total of €20 million in governmental loans, provided some ad-hoc charter services, and operated a limited number of flights for the December 2020 holiday season. After fifteen months of suspensions, the airline's regular commercial flights eventually resumed on 12 June 2021. Following the resumption of service, the airline on 18 June 2021 announced two new destinations to its network, consisting of summer seasonal flights between Paris Orly and

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the ...

to begin on 21 July 2021, and flights between Newark and Milan Malpensa to begin on 29 November 2021, however both routes were subsequently postponed, with the Tel Aviv flights delayed from a summer to a winter launch, and the Milan flights delayed to summer 2022. In July 2021, the airline was reported to be considering the operation of

Airbus A321XLR The Airbus A320neo family is a development of the A320 family of narrow-body airliners produced by Airbus. The A320neo family (''neo'' for "new engine option") is based on the previous A319, A320 and A321 ( enhanced variant), which was then ren ...

aircraft. On 9 December 2021,

AfriJet Afrijet Business Service is a Gabonese airline operating scheduled service to a number of airports throughout Cameroon, Gabon, and São Tomé, as well as the Republic of the Congo. History Afrijet was founded in 2004 by a group of private inves ...

announced it had partnered with La Compagnie to launch seasonal flights between Paris Orly and Libreville's Léon-Mba International Airport from 16 December 2021, in place of La Compagnie's services to Tel Aviv which were further postponed, before eventually being cancelled.

Destinations

La Compagnie serves or has previously served the following destinations :

Airline partnerships

While La Compagnie does not have

interlining Interlining, also known as interline ticketing and interline booking, is a voluntary commercial agreement between individual airlines to handle passengers traveling on itineraries that require multiple flights on multiple airlines. Such agreement ...

codeshare agreement A codeshare agreement, also known simply as codeshare, is a business arrangement, common in the aviation industry, in which two or more airlines publish and market the same flight under their own airline designator and flight number (the "airli ...

s, the airline partners with

easyJet EasyJet plc (styled as easyJet) is a British multinational low-cost airline group headquartered at London Luton Airport. It operates domestic and international scheduled services on 927 routes in more than 34 countries via its affiliate airli ...

through its ''Worldwide by easyJet'' program.

Fleet

La Compagnie Airbus A321-251NX F-HBUZ approaching Newark Airport

Current fleet

, the La Compagnie fleet consists of the following aircraft:

Former fleet

Service

La Compagnie's aircraft are equipped with an all-

cabin arranged in a 2–2 configuration, consisting of 76 seats that convert to flat beds.

Inflight entertainment In-flight entertainment (IFE) refers to the entertainment available to aircraft passengers during a flight. In 1936, the airship '' Hindenburg'' offered passengers a piano, lounge, dining room, smoking room, and bar during the -day flight betwee ...

is provided on 15.7 inch (40 cm) seatback touchscreens, and inflight

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wav ...

access provided by

Viasat Viasat may refer to: *Viasat (American company) (founded 1986) * Viasat (Nordic television service) (founded 1991) * Danish 1st Division, officially Viasat Divisionen, second-highest football league in Denmark * Viasat Cup, 2006 Danish football to ...

is also available. Food is served in a two-course meal. La Compagnie uses contracted lounges for its passengers.

Frequent flyer program

''My Compagnie'' is La Compagnie's frequent-flyer program, through which passengers can earn points on flights, as well as by referring others to register for the program. Points accrued can be redeemed towards award flights on La Compagnie and towards itinerary changes for flights that have already been booked, avoiding the monetary fees for changes in the process.

References

External links

Official website
{{Airlines of France Airlines of France Airlines established in 2013 Business class airlines