Good news for travelers

As regular readers of this blog may recall, Marc and I flew the all-business class airline Maxjet to London earlier this year. We loved it. It's a bit pricey at full fare (we got our tickets on sale), but it's still a lot cheaper than flying one of the traditional carriers in business class.

Since then, I've been waiting for them (or someone similar) to offer this kind of service to the European Continent. Maxjet sends e-surveys every so often, and my response to each one of them has ended with me offering a comment urging them to fly to Paris or some other city on the Continent. So far, no luck with Maxjet, but there is a positive sign.

As travel authority Rudy Maxa reports in his blog, a new French airline is about to launch. Called L'Avion, they don't even have an English language website yet, but, as I learned from another report, they're working on that.

L'Avion officially launches next week. As Rudy reports, Air France has already announced a price drop for business class tickets. They're still too high for us to be plunking down money on them, but this is a good sign. As the all-business class approach grows, there should be more high-quality airlines like Maxjet with reasonable prices.

I'm probably more excited about these developments than many people would be, but I've been hoping for luxury air travel at reasonable prices for years. In fact, I'm sure many friends have heard me expound on this concept. As in, "I'd be willing to pay a reasonable price for a bit more room and decent service." Actually, if I'd had any real knowledge of the industry (as in, connections, funding, etc.), I probably could have made my fortune in one of these ventures. But I can live with just having access to quality air travel without having to pay six, eight or ten grand to get to Europe (not that we could afford such a thing!).