First, there was El Al creating UP. Then, there's Air France creating Joon. There seems to be this trend where airlines create subsidiaries (sort of an airline within an airline) in order to compete with low-cost carriers. Basically, they create these low-cost carrier subsidiaries, and somehow they use these low-cost subsidiaries to fly to Berlin. This makes me wonder, is Berlin really that popular for travelers who don't have a lot of money?
I do like the idea that flying is cheap nowadays. However, I find myself scratching my head when you have companies like Air France who think that they won't fly Air France mainline to Berlin anymore, but they would rather send Joon, their airline aimed at young people. I wonder how a corporate executive would feel when he books a higher-class ticket in Joon, when all the flight attendants are young and millennial, rendering him pretty much out of place.
I understand that this is a marketing tactic, and that Air France and El Al are trying to compete against other low-cost carriers. It's just that Air France cannot fully transform itself to Easyjet, or to Ryanair, or to other low-cost carriers. Air France is still a legacy carrier, and it's a little strange when in order to compete, they have to emulate a particular generation in order to be competitive.
