While many airlines walk away from true first class, some – like Air France, Cathay Pacific, and Singapore Airlines – lean into it. The same is true for Emirates. The market for spending far more than business class isn’t a large one, but it’s lucrative.

• Customers trading down from flying private for long haul. This isn’t about ‘how much more than business class is it worth’ but how much of a value is commercial airline first class, if you can make it a reasonable substitute?

• And while many businesses won’t pay for first class, for executives crucial to multi-billion dollar deals transporting their brain from one place to another is very lucrative and airfare a rounding error. They may not be the ones taking advantage of high end alcohol onboard (unless they’re French!) but eliminating all stress from the experience delivers them in their best condition to be effective.

That’s why there are still 8,000 first class seats flying every day.

Air France has a gorgeous new first class. Already they had a top 5 world product, and the new first class is also a top 5 world product – though it doesn’t clearly move them up that ladder. Their first class ground service in Paris is probably best, though, outmatching rival Lufthansa in Frankfurt.

Lufthansa, though, is testing new first class service ideas. Here’s one report from a Miami – Frankfurt flight,

New amuse-bouche with two different small servings
Caviar service with potato blinis instead of toast, served with a mother-of-pearl spoon
Option to have a smaller main course to try more of the different food offerings
New dessert concept inspired by “café gourmand,” with three smaller servings
New cutlery, plates, and glassware, including different wine glasses to accommodate various wine types
New blanket—seems to be a wool/cashmere blend

Lufthansa is also testing picking up passengers at home and driving them straight to the plane, skipping the terminal (even the first class terminal) completely.

It’s not clear how this will work in practice, especially with passport control. You’d need to a make a stop in the car, at least, at the First Class Terminal’s passport control in Frankfurt for immigration formalities and the same goes for security screening? And it will be also interesting to see how they time traffic to and from the airport. If they’re setting this up to take you straight to the aircraft, that’s cutting it very close with boarding and passengers might miss flights – but if they build in a buffer, it seems like passengers would still kill time in the lounge?

Nonetheless, at least they’re trying to think different with premium services and counter the fact that modern airports have become a huge time suck and inconvenience factor – especially considering that the very purpose of air travel is time efficiency.