explanation for price difference between flying Delta and Air France to Paris?

Delta often codeshares with AirFrance. I don't have a specific comment on the price difference. I will say I much prefer a Delta operated flight over AirFrance. That said, for that price difference I would choose the AirFrance flight. In regards to your experience with AirFrance cancelling your son's flight, that was just one flight. I've had a number of flights cancelled with Delta, as well. Now, if you felt the AirFrance customer service was poor in handling your son's cancellation, that may be something to consider.

I don't know of anyone who can explain airline fares. They just seem to be what they are. I think Air France is perfectly fine and have flown them several time. Fly often enough and you will get a flight from hell regardless of the airline. A few years ago we were on Lufthansa taxing to the take off point when the "check engine light came on." Since we had one flight a day out of our airport to Germany it was three days before we made it. You learn to roll and plan for disruptions. I would not be concerned about Air France. All things being equal, book 'em.

Because their computers say those prices at this time will make the most money.

Airlines have invested a lot in revenue management.... Pricing is totally unrelated to any of the "reasons" the OP has, it's all supply and demand.

Even if it's the same flight shared by different airlines, different airlines have on average different customers.

Stop expecting anything about the cost of flight tickets to make any sense.

As a Delta Airlines passenger for decades I’ve flown their partner airlines AF, KLM, etc without disappointment. While I prefer a Delta flagged and operated aircraft I’ve had zero issues with any of them. When attempting to book a flight to Rome a year ago I found that the price was much cheaper via Air France/KLM’s website than via Delta. Additionally, on Delta’s website sometimes the AF operated flight can be cheaper, equal or just as expensive. There is nothing available to help understand why. Sometimes a great fare is just a role of the dice.

Flight disruptions can happen with any airlines on any day for any reason whether it be weather, maintenance, staffing, etc. I’m always thankful when everything goes smoothly but flexible with adjustments along the way.

Are you sure that Delta flight is an A335? That seems to be a military plane. Perhaps you meant an A330, or an A350?

If the latter, that is one of the planes that was reported in another thread here to be designed to reduce jet lag and travel fatigue (along with the Boeing 787, also a carbon-fiber aircraft).

All airlines cancel flights from time to time, and recently it has been occurring more frequently, due to staffing shortages. We have seen several flight disruptions due to that on our recent trips——last March, we were waiting at Heathrow for our delayed departure to SFO, and heard announcements on cancellation of two flights scheduled around the same time—one to LAX and one to South Africa. Our delay, and the two cancellations, were all A380’s, a plane which apparently has been suffering from “supply chain” issues with parts necessary for maintenance.

As for Delta, they lost my son’s family’s baggage last September when they were on their way to meet us in Switzerland. Delta said it would be on the next plane so they waited at the Zurich airport for 6 hours with no joy, and finally came to Mürren where we were waiting for them. They arrived after 11 pm. Their bags did not catch up with us until 6 days later. We followed its progress with the AirTag in one of the bags.

My point is simply that air travel can be a bit challenging these days. As for prices, they are going to fluctuate, but in general will just keep going up. Especially flights to Paris.

Maybe Air France is getting some kind of subsidy from the government to help keep prices down for the Olympics?

We like Delta in general, as the son’s neighbor in Idaho is a retired Delta pilot and he says great things about the airline. And we think a lot of him.

There are a couple obvious answers.

First, while codeshare and can sell each others seats, they are different corporations and price their products independently. Promotions differ, sometimes relative value between euros and Dollars plays a roll, whether it is a primary route for one or the other plays a role, and dozen other factors.

Second, I doubt the service classes you are comparing are absolutely equal. Not sure what class you mean by "preferred", but Delta offers Delta One, a top class, lie flat seat; Premium Select, which is like First class on domestic, but a recliner type of seat and other amenities; Comfort Plus, which is like economy but more leg room, and Main Cabin. Air France offers La Premiere, like Delta one, but maybe better?; Business class, which is also lie flat seating, but a bit more bare bones than Delta One; Then Premium Economy, which is like Comfort Plus, probably not as nice as Premium Select; and then Economy. Basically, if you are comparing Delta Premium Select with Air France Premium Economy...they are not the same.

We've never flown Air France because in 2016 our son and his girlfriend's flight to meet us in Paris on Air France from LAX was cancelled and they finally arrived on another flight many hours later and exhausted. We are in our 70s and cannot handle that kind of disruption anymore.

Do not make decisions based on somebodies one bad experience 7 or 8 years ago. By that logic, no one should ever fly, ever again. You can find lots of horror stories about every airline out there. The good news is that those experiences are rare.

Even the exact same flight will have different prices - so AF123 (or whatever) leaving at 430 pm from JFK will be priced and whatever and KLM's codeshare of that flight will be priced higher and so will Deltas.... (I frequently will check the codeshare airlines, just in case)... and it's not just AF/Delta/KLM, it's AA/BA, etc., too.

And even if you pay more for that Delta flight, it might end up cancelled and you re-booked on an Air France flight. That has happened on our last 2 flights. They got us there, so all was good in the end.

Flying anywhere on any airline always includes the risk of irregular operations. You simply can't avoid this risk. You can do things to mitigate it. First, non-stop flights give you fewer opportunities for things to go wrong, although they still can do so. You can avoid taking the last flight of the day out of any hub as if something goes wrong, you will be waiting until the next morning. Finally, give yourself the gift of time. Give yourself an extra day in travel time before anything important is scheduled. Have a tour, reservations at a specific site, a cruise to join? Then travel an extra day earlier.

If you really can't handle any sort of travel disruption, you will find traveling in 2024 a challenge. No one wants them. Usually everything goes fine. However, they do happen and they happen on every airline.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts. I forgot to mention that my son's flight was cancelled due to an Air France strike and when I mentioned it to the concierge at our hotel, he laughed and said something to the effect that this was France where there's always a strike going on and that he wouldn't fly Air France himself. I've flown enough to expect delays, some of them interminably long but I'm not keen on being stranded because of a strike and with Air France I don't know how often they happen. Apologies for the omission!

FWIW. Delta's premium economy seat are grotesquely uncomfortable. We will never book them again to Paris for that reason alone.

Here's a good article comparing the various airlines including Air France Premium Economy and Delta Premium Select if that is your choices at those fares. https://www.afar.com/magazine/which-airlines-premium-economy-is-worth-it

Airline seats are priced the way they are because someone will pay that amount. Don't expect to see any logic in a system designed to confuse.

Delta's premium economy seat are grotesquely uncomfortable.

That is part of the problem with discussing these issues, Delta has no seat class called "Premium Economy" Or for that matter "Business Class", or even "First Class" on International flights.

My experience in Delta's premium econ seats has been just lovely.

And I've flown Delta codeshares with AF and with Virgin and they are also just fine. When you use Google flights they usually show the different codeshare pricing options.

As for cancellations and changes, if you can't handle those you can't handle air travel these days. Or train travel. Or bus travel. Or ...

FWIW. Delta's premium economy seat are grotesquely uncomfortable.

Perhaps you meant AF's PE seats are grossly uncomfortable? The PE seats on AF's 777's are the dreaded clamshells that don't recline. By comparison, Delta's PE seats are a a slice of heaven.

To the OP--we of course have no idea why the flight prices are different. However, if by "preferred seats" you mean Premium Economy, the Delta seat, as noted above is much more comfortable than Air France's on the plane types you mentioned. And, here I am offering an opinion and flying off on a tangent, but Delta has gotten rather full of themselves, seeing themselves as more 'premium' than other airlines. They arrogantly trashed their frequent flyer program last year and had to back off some when the howls from said frequent flyers reached their ears. They just assumed that their best customers would take the hit, shut up, and just be grateful they were granted the privilege of flying on Delta. They also used to have markedly better on-time and cancellation performance than many other airlines, which made paying the premium to fly with Delta at least somewhat explainable. They would at times go days with no cancellations. Not any more. This gap has shrunk over these past few years, so one can't use those metrics to justify the higher cost to fly with them.

Delta PE seats are in fact the dreaded clamshell seats that are excruciating -- they are putting them in to all Delta planes. I Never fly AF after several unpleasant trips with them. United and American both have very comfortable PE seats and also American has significantly superior last meal -- lunch or breakfast -- than others we have tried. KLM which is a Delta partner has comfortable PE seats -- We flew Delta to and KLM from last spring -- miserable on the flight over, made worse because it was the overnight flight and so the discomfort made sleep impossible. The KLM seats were good. We make this flight twice a year and will never book Delta again. We booked American this fall even though Delta had a better timed flight.

I hate flying Delta back from CDG as opposed to Air France. The lines are always longert, less people working, and it never fails to take 30 minutes to leave my bag. When I use Air France it's always much faster.

To the OP:

Here's a video that shows the clamshell seat in the Air France plane you're talking about. I have flown this exact plane multiple times in PE, and can confirm the seat is exactly as shown in this video...it does not recline. Instead, the bottom slides forward. For me, and many others, this is uncomfortable, and makes sleeping very difficult...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm4e60AZ95o

Air France has finally realized people don't like these seats, and in their newer planes are replacing them with "standard" seats that recline.

I have also flown Delta in PE, and my seat has never been a clamshell, but a regular, reclining seat, as shown on the linked page below. I would be quite surprised if they were going to the sort of clamshell seat shown in the video above. I would also expect the forums over on sites such as FlyerTalk to be filled with complaints, which I have not seen. But, I could be wrong.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/delta-air-lines-retrofitted-airbus-a330-tour/

Again, people are using terms for something that does not exist. Delta offers no "Premium Economy" or "PE" seats on International flights. They have Comfort Plus, which is an Economy or main cabin seat, and they have Premium Select, which is not an "economy" seat, in regards to both the width and leg room, these were introduced in 2017 as a new class of seat. To the OPs question, If they are comparing Premium Select with Premium Economy on Air France, they are not the same, and likely the reason for the price difference.

Eric. I flew Delta in October and they were crowing about the new fancy seats in PE. They were in fact the nightmare clamshell seats from hell. They were in the process according to the FAs of outfitting all their planes with them. It is the sole reason we no longer fly Delta internationally . The FA who told us they were being put in all planes told me that the FAs agreed that the economy seats were more comfortable than these monstrosities.

Premium Select is Delta's name for their premium economy product. Just like United calls theirs Premium Plus. Premium economy is the generic name. They offer the same as what Air France and others simply call Premium Economy--a larger seat with more space, and (usually) some sort of better service. Also, if one is booking tickets on Delta's website where one can choose flights on Delta or AF aircraft, Premium Select and PE are shown in the same column. This would certainly seem to indicate the Delta themselves considers these two things to be equivalent. A rose by any other name....

Janet, what type of plane did you fly on? Did your seat actually recline?

When you click through to buy is the cost difference made up in taxes?

I usually only fly United because I live close by EWR but had Delta credit to use so I recently booked a $536 RT trip (beginning of February ) on Delta (operated by Air France) which is Delta 8758 and 8760 both A350-900.

The last time I flew Air France my husband, 10 year old and myself were flying from Warsaw to CDG and when we were about 100 feet (I have no clue - but very close) from the ground (landing at CDG) the plane shot back in the air and the pilot garbled something in polish or French and everyone gasped and when we finally landed people clapped and got emotional. We never figured out what happened.

Thanks again everyone. With all the different types of seating and various labels for those seats it sure seems that choosing flights is a lot more complicated than it needs to be. The 'preferred' seats that I mentioned are the aisle and window seats that you pay extra for (usually around $60) in economy/main cabin. United calls those seats 'select' I think. These are the seats we usually purchase when flying from the East coast to CDG. My husband flew to Paris from San Francisco in November on United's 'premium economy' which he thoroughly enjoyed. We used 80,000 air miles and paid about $80 in taxes and an additional $750 for premium economy, which included a much more roomier seat, noise cancelling head phones, a small bag of toiletries and warm socks, nice meals on real china and cutlery and a respectable glass of wine with both dinner and breakfast. It makes sense that he noticed that the people around him in premium economy seemed to be a friendlier, happier bunch, probably because they were so comfortable during the flight.

I appreciate all the feedback, links and stories of everyone's travel experiences. I think we'll stick with United this time around. If we're very lucky we'll score a good price on those premium economy seats which can vary between $400 to $800 or fly on preferred/select seats. Happy travels to all in the New Year.

I forgot to mention that I didn't notice whether the $700 difference in price between the Delta and Air France tickets was due to taxes. It's crazy how many variables we have to consider when purchasing air fares. Bon chance everyone!

@janettravels, I am very interested in your Delta experience.
I am wondering if you would be willing to add more details. When you post that Delta's premium economy seat was a clamshell and very uncomfortable, I think it is misleading.

As somebody mentioned, Delta doesn't label any of it's seats Premium economy.
The class labeled Premium Select, which I think is being confused with your description of PE, is not a clam shell seat. It just isn't. The two classes that I can determine would be First Class (domestic) or Comfort plus. Delta doesn't specify exactly what those seats look like on the website.

Can you elaborate?

Air France offers La Premiere, like Delta one, but maybe better?; Business class, which is also lie flat seating, but a bit more bare bones than Delta One; Then Premium Economy, which is like Comfort Plus, probably not as nice as Premium Select; and then Economy.

Just read this, here are the cabins and their names for international flights.

AF's La Premiere is a first-class product. Delta has no equivalent.

For instance, one of the perks of La Premiere is...
"In Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse, your personal Hertz DriveU driver will pick you up in a premium vehicle and drive you to the airport.
You can also take advantage of this service upon arrival of your La Première cabin flight at Paris-Charles de Gaulle or your connecting flight to one of the cities listed. The Hertz DriveU service is complimentary to our La Première guests."

https://wwws.airfrance.us/information/prepare/voyager-avec-la-premiere#airport

AF Business and Delta One are both business-class products.

AF PE and and Delta Premium Select are both premium economy products.

Comfort plus has no equivalent on AF (as well as most other airlines. Delta is somewhat unique in giving these extra-leg room/regular economy seats their own distinct class of service.)

And, both AF Economy and Delta's Main Cabin are economy-class products.

Corporations love branding to try to differentiate their products from other corporations more-or-less identical product. And, by reading the posts here, it apparently works :-)

I think the discussion reflects some confusion between the “cabin” (which usually defines the class of service) and the type of seat within the cabin. The generic terms for the “cabin” on international flights. are Economy, Premium Economy, Business Class, and First Class. Not many airplanes have all 4 classes these days, and some airlines offer only 2, Economy and Business Class. But as Premium Economy becomes more and more popular, more airlines are configuring their planes to offer it.

The problem is that each airline can choose to give different names to the classes/cabins. And others designate certain seats within the Economy cabin as “Premium” (generally window and aisle seats, and exit row seats). Others have 2 different prices for the Economy Cabin, with the lower price have no checked baggage and maybe no seat choice (meaning they will likely be assigned a middle seat).

The true Premium Economy (as in a separate cabin, not just a better seat in Economy) can vary a lot from airline to airline. On some, it is a sort of “business class lite” with similar meal service on china, etc., and other business class perks, but no lie-flat seat. On others, the meals are not much different from Economy, but there is more legroom , and wider seats, with 2-3-2 seating instead of 3-4-3 like some Economy Class planes.

I would definitely pay more for those paired seats by the window in Premium Economy if flying as a couple. Then you have no worries about a bad seatmate. After one very bad experience with 3-4-3 seating on a Qantas to Australia 30+ years ago, I won’t fly overseas like that again. fortunately, we have lots of miles and can normally fly Business Class, so no worries there. When I cannot get that, we fly Premium Economy and I choose our seats right away to get the ones that are paired, not the trio in the middle.

We recently flew back from Japan in the JL Premium Economy (Business class sold out with miles), and were pleasantly surprised by 2 things, and disappointed by one: first, it included Lounge access, which is very unusual. Turns out the lounge at KIX is not all that great in terms of food, but it was nice to have a quiet pre-flight place to stay. Second, although we were in the middle section, with 3 seats (because I booked too late to get the window-aisle duo),there was no one in the other seat. OTOH, the food was like Economy—-a plastic tray with compartments.

It appears from the above post that Delta has their own names for each class of service, and does not offer anything comparable to the Air France First Class with chauffeur to the airport. I wouldn’t be too concerned about that. The two times we have scored First Class in international travel with our Alaska miles, we did not use the Chauffeur service. I’d say Delta has made a wise and practical decision in not including that in their Delta One product.

We've flown Air France many times, and for the most part, they have been fine. Maybe a little dated/worn, but they get you there just like every other airline. Would not hesitate to book them again based on huge savings. This past October, we booked a group fare through Delta, and they put us on KLM/Air France. The Delta booking was way more money than the KLM/Air France booking.

We always find better deals on Air France.

I am an AF-KLM Frequent flyer for leisure ( Platinum level for 3 years already) and if you want to accrue miles and XP on your AF-KLM FB account, it's wiser to fly Delta versus AF . However, it's also far better to buy a Delta flight even if operated by AF-KLM:) When you fly AF-KLM you get 8 miles per € spent, so if your RT ticket is € 1500 between PARIS and NYC in premium economy, you roughly accrue 10000 miles. However if you book the same flight on delta, you get 200¨% of the mileage as a platinum member flying A class. So your CDG-JFK accrues about 14500 miles for the same price:) AF-KL does not offer any mileage bonus to their gold or platinum members so it's moneywise traveling Skyteam in most cases versus AF even if you end up seated in an AF or KLM aircraft.
Food in premium economy is economy food with a white cloth, and steel cutlery on Delta versus bamboo knives, carton cups . Food used to be really good on AF, but that was 10 or 15 years ago....However, I heard they have upgrades their meals so I will judge for myself when flying to Beijing next month...They no longer hand out menus and the hot towel is a small pre packed disposal towel unlike other airlines. The good point in AF is the champagne! Oops, their breakfast offer is non existent....very bad!
Enjoy your flight!

I’ve been flying only Delta/Air France between the States and Paris the last few years (usually twice a year, except obviously in 2020). I always buy on Delta because that’s where my miles are.

I literally couldn’t tell you the difference. Sometimes I end up on an AirFrance flight, but I literally could not identify anything different between the two. I fly Main Cabin economy, and I just don’t pay enough attention (and I mostly don’t eat the airline food).

I would buy whichever one is cheaper, and take whichever company’s plane showed up. Both will get you there. It’s only a few hours in either case.