Air France restructures domestic network, announces plans to leave Paris-Orly 

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Mathieu Marquer

Air France has announced a major restructuring of its domestic flight operation in France

From summer 2026, Air France will concentrate all its domestic and international flights at Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport (CDG), winding down the majority of its operations at Paris-Orly Airport (ORY). The only exception will be flights to the Mediterranean island of Corsica, which is a Public Service Obligation (PSO) route served in cooperation with Air Corsica. 

Transavia, the low-cost airline of the Air France-KLM group, will take over the routes connecting Paris-Orly to three major French cities: Toulouse (TLS), Marseilles (MRS) and Nice (NCE). 

Air France will reinforce its own service between the three cities and its Paris Charles-de-Gaulle hub, where it is possible to connect with the airline’s extensive global network.  

Domestic destinations in France’s overseas territories, such as Pointe-à-Pitre (PTP) and Fort-de-France (FDF), in the Caribbean, and Roland Garros international airport, in Saint-Denis de La Réunion (RUN), in the Indian Ocean, will also see capacity increases from Charles-de-Gaulle. 

Announcing the news in a press release on October 18, 2023, the French flag carrier cited the drop in domestic business travel, driven in part by technologies such as videoconferencing software, but also by a change in travel habits and the increasingly stricter short-haul travel policies of many companies.  

Air France reported that demand on point-to-point domestic routes out of ORY dropped by 40% between 2019 and 2023, with same-day return trips falling even further by 60%. 

Overall, this restructuring will represent a 10% drop in capacity offered by the Air France-KLM group on trunk routes within mainland France, with no change to the total capacity offered to and from the country’s overseas territories. 

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