Originally Posted by
jlemon
Yep, I thought we were looking for a third air carrier here....and although Lufthansa ordered the A300 early on, I do not think it was LH.
So let's go with Air Inter. And if so, the A300 was probably way too big for most domestic routes in France.
No, it wasn't Air Inter in 1974; although an early purchaser I believe their first came in 1976.
And the A300 was much more relevant to Air Inter then. The French TGV high speed rail system only first opened, a relatively short part, in 1981 (gosh, nearly 40 years ago). Since then it has expanded immensely, but prior to that the main trunk airline routes to the French cities well removed from Paris - Nice, Marseille, Bordeaux, even Lyon, were substantial high density operations. These routes lost much of their business as the TGV came along.
If it helps, this early third operator did run the A300 to Asia. Although they weren't Asian. Nor European.