Originally Posted by Occasional Aviator
From someone who was there, and saw the ATO being built:
On your first point, CDG didn't make much difference and the FAF was able to take up the slack easily with Rafales based at Solenzara (one of the furthest airfields from Benghazi) on the (surprisingly frequent) days when she didn't launch...
That's peculiar. According to this article on the French Navy website, the carrier
Charles de Gaulle conducted flying operations on 120 of her 138 days at sea and her air group flew 1,350 sorties involving 2,380 catapult launches/landings totalling 3,600 flying hours in theatre: