UK or Irish airlines into french domestic ?

[beaucaire]

Are there any qualified guesses about UK or Irish airlines entering the french domestic market? ( Air Arann has been roumored..)
So far Air France have a literally unchallenged turf but east-west links like Nice-Rennes,Marseille-La Rochelle or Montpellier-Mulhouse are up for grabs.
Could participants of this forum give any feedback if those lines ( or any other ) will be served by any british or irish airline?

[nickmanl]

EasyJet already operate a very skeletal service in France. I think Ryanair may open some routes in the near future.

[beaucaire]

I should have qualified other than Ryanair or Easyjet ...
I am more interested in news regarding "newcommers" like Flybe ,Air Arann or any other of the smaller operators.

[Maddog Red]

Let’s not forget the 4th biggest city in France, Toulouse. It has a very big foreign population of 50k plus living in the city, never mind the surrounding area which are not catered for very well, I would like to see a Low Cost airline really move in and compete with Air France on internal routes and Lufthansa on routes into Germany It makes you laugh as well how difficult it is to get to South Spain from Toulouse and to drive means a 12hour journey.

[beaucaire]

France remains a pretty devopping country in terms of Airline-competition and free access to air-servces.
Air France will do anything to kill competition ( historically proven - Ait Lib was killed from inside by an AF mole planted in the company..)
Cities like Toulouse,Montpellier,Lille or Starsbourg have very little competition and customers have the choice to fly either AF via Paris or take the TGV ( which is good into Paris but takes the better part of a day for trips east to west or north-west to south -east......)
Ryanair does fly from many province-airports to the UK ,but if I want to go from Montpellier to Madrid ,Lisbon or Rome- it still cost me a trip via Paris - which is completely stupid . !
There is lots of room for business in France and I think sooner or later the sky's will see a lot of UK registered planes taking off...

( I live in the south of France and find the AF monopoly disgraceful !!!!!)

[virginblue]

Remember that Buzz operated four domestic routes in France in 2002:

Brest-Marseilles
Bordeaux-Grenoble
Bordeaux-Toulon
Toulouse-Grenoble

None of them worked really well.

[Flying Quill]

From what I understand easyJet have been begging for more slots out of Orly since opening the base two years ago. I imagine they could triple the fleet based there if COHOR would only give up the slots. But it just aint happening...

FQ

[beaucaire]

Something must be pretty rotten in french aviation-politics...
All about political influences arround Spinetta and his gang.
France is a shame for civil-aviation - the only country in Europe wothout a Lowcost.

[goldeneye]

I think the biggest problem is with French domestic flights is the competition from the Trains ie the TGV which can go from Paris to the south of france in a couple of hours. Air France even code-shares with SNCF on some of the train services.

[EI-WAT]

Aer Arann have flight between Waterford, Galway & Cork to l'Orient

[EI-MICK]

Aer Arann have now already increased the capacity on the lorient route due to big demand.

[ATR Operator]

Aer Arann have been awarded a French PSO route operating from Strasbourg to Amsterdam this week. Company will soon open it's first european base in Strasbourg, France. More routes are soon to follow from here if the internal rumours are true.

[EIDW Spotter]

Fair play to Aer Arann. This might be the work the need to cover themselves in case Ryanair start the "rumoured" DUB - CRK.


Will more ATR's be purcahsed for these new routes? or maybe upgrade to RJ'S

[MarkD]

Spotter

No need for RE to "upgrade" - ATRs are the bread and butter, and if Euromanx contracts much further a base on the Isle might be on the cards! "Upgrading" puts them in FR/EI/Easy sights, staying put leaves them with Flybe and Logan and the ever contracting BACX, plenty for everyone.

Stick with the knitting Arann methinks, although if they could scare up a few extras (like Cat II approaches at ORK and maybe -500 series ATRs) it would be nice...

[840]

Interesting.

I wonder if they'll try flying to either from Ireland.

Galway-Amsterdam might work, considering the route isn't served from Shannon or Knock.

[MarkD]

840

Interesting thought - although I would like to see them look at SNN-AMS to open up Schipol traffic. Unfortunately since they got burned on the SNN-DUB route they don't seem minded to revisit Shannon - they could also look at an IOM service to get some TA traffic.

Am interested to see if AMS-SXB is codeshared with AF/KL... hard to believe a PSO needed on that route.

[EI-WAT]

Try Waterford - Amsterdam being rumoured for a long while

[piston pete]

Am interested to see if AMS-SXB is codeshared with AF/KL... hard to believe a PSO needed on that route.

There are a number of PSO routes ex SXB, mainly to EU capital cities. DUB-SXB is a PSO route that nobody has taken up. Only a matter of time I suppose.

[Turbo-driver]

There is no AF/KL codeshare on the AMS-SXB route.

A few years ago KLM Cityhopper was operating on this route. Don't know when and why they stopped to operate the route.


WAT-AMS is very unlikely to happen.....but then again, aviation goes both ways.

DUB-SXB......sounds interesting.

[airhumberside]

Last airline on AMS-SXB was the Exel Group, I think operating as KLM Exel. The route stopped when the Exel Group went bankrupt