Air France www.airfrance.com OR www.airfrance.us

Air France is what those in the airline business call the flag carrier for all international flights to France. International carriers like Air France operate on a modified hub and spoke system using stops called gateway cities to ferry passengers to their home countries.

In the U.S., Air France currently flies from 13 such gateway cities and provides service from 125 U.S. cities through code-share agreements with SkyTeam partners, Delta and Continental.

But Air France is more than just getting people across the Atlantic. It has routes to 296 cities in 85 countries and employs over 64,000 people. It is part of the SkyTeam Alliance with Delta, Aeroméxico, Korean Air, Czech Airlines and Alitalia. Because of the SkyTeam business arrangement, Air France was ranked the first Airline in Europe, having carried 18% of all European passengers in 2004.

Of course, when you think of Air France, you think of the Concorde. In 1976, the airline started operating the unique Concorde SST supersonic airliner, using it on the Paris-Charles de Gaulle to New York route. The Concorde was one of only two supersonic passenger aircraft in commercial service, and quite frankly, it's the only one that the Travelsites team really remembers. Covering the Paris to New York City route in 3 hours and 20 minutes (at about twice the speed of sound), the Concorde flight to Paris was a favorite of businessmen looking to travel across the pond. The speed allowed Air France to charge about 3x that of normal flights.

The airline was named Air France in August 1933, following the takeover of the assets of the bankrupt Aéropostale -- and here the Travelsites Editor's thought that was just a place to buy cool jeans. Air France officially came to be at Paris-Le Bourget Airport in October 1933. Air France adopted Air Orient's winged seahorse logo, the vestiges of which you can still see in its white, red and blue logo. On September 30, 2003, Air France and Netherlands-based KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines), announced the merging of the two airlines, forming a new company to be known as Air France-KLM. The combined entity is one of the world's largest airlines, but it has maintained a touch of each carrier's native charms.

Business travelers continue to favor the service of Air France for international flights. The staff is friendly, and the wine list is always impressive.

The Air France website is one of the first major sites to use a .us domain, so the Travelsites team applauds the team behind this project. Although most people probably still type in www.airfrance.com, the idea of using country-centric domains underscores just how serious the folks at Air France have been about their online forays. The first version of their website launched in 1997, making it one of the earlier airline sites. They still do some really interesting things. The history area of the site boasts a slideshow called "On the wings of a seahorse", which is a pictorial history of Air France. Even if you're not looking for a flight to Paris, you should still check it out.

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