How do you get nomadic, smartphone-addicted city hipsters, aged between 18 and 35, to buy a plane ticket? You give them a low-cost "millennial airline" fitted with all the generational stereotypes.
In Air France's new airline Joon, launched in December last year, there's plenty of electric blue and organic coffee. It is "a fashion brand, a rooftop bar, an entertainment channel, a personal assistant", says the airline's press release, adding, in case you thought it was a spiffy concept store, that "Joon does flying too!"
And no, it doesn't just zip through European destinations. From 18 June, Air France will start operating this "new gen" airline on the Paris-Mumbai route as well, replacing its mainline service on the same way.
For all intents and purposes, the demographic slice of millennials are seen as confident, assertive, open-minded, ambitious, anxious, narcissistic and detached, apart from being perpetually plugged in, searching for new "experiences". Hence, the passengers onboard the “punchy, energetic and dynamic” Joon (a riff on jeune, French for "young") can have cocktails from an inventive speakeasy in Paris called Experimental Cocktail Club. Apart from free organic coffee, there is craft beer, cappuccinos, lemonade with Sicilian lemons, baobab juice, 100 per cent fruit vitamin-filled smoothies and "French meals" which include quinoa salad and organic fruit compote. To stress that millennials aren't just conscious eaters, but also literally wear their eco-friendly cred on their sleeve, the young and cheery cabin crew at Joon sport trainers and chic uniforms in electric blue, made of recycled fabric from plastic bottles.
In-flight entertainment includes a virtual reality service, where passengers can rent fancy headsets to watch programs from channels like Viceland and RedBullTV. Many of these perks come at a price, of course, but they are all there and curated for passengers willing to spend extra bucks.
But detractors haven't taken kindly to this marketing gimmick and oversimplification of millennial traits. "Maybe instead of trying to create a new condescending airline, try to fix the ones you already got," said TV show host Paul Taylor. They have also blamed Air France-KLM Group of overselling this fashion-forward, tech-savvy image to improve their cost-performance. "At stake is Air France's ability to defend European routes against further incursions from no-frills specialists led by Ryanair, while combating an emerging discount challenge in lucrative long-haul markets," said one article titled The truth about Joon - Air France's new airline for millennials.
Joon presently operates flights from Paris to eight destinations in Europe, apart from three overseas cities—Cairo, Cape Town and Tehran. Many others are in the offing. The Mumbai-Paris leg of the route will be plied on an Airbus A340. But for millennials in India, a trip to the city of lights just got more dazzling.