Goldorak

AF will serve YQB, it's 4th Canadian destination, from 17/05, 3x/week. Aircraft A332
Days : tuesday, thursday, saturday
AF352: CDG 13h10 - YQB 14h40
AF353: YQB 17h00 - CDG 05h45 (D+1)

A very smart move from AF, knowing the traffic they have to YUL
I believe this route will be seasonal only.
The bus service from/to AF flights in YUL - Québec city is maintained.

SkyteamEP

AF stopped serving YVR until April 2022.

mlin32

Good news ! The JFK Orly route is coming back for the summer schedule, ŕ partir du 27/03.

Goldorak

Indeed
ORY-JFK : 1 daily flight from 27/03.
On the same day, resumption of CDG-DFW with up to 5 weekly flights.

And on May 4, the restart of the seasonal service CDG-DEN with 3 weekly flights.

Goldorak

Finally !!!
AF will serve NCE-LHR from 9 JULY until 28 AUG once a day (A320)
AF7380 NCE 15:40 LHR 16:35
AF7381 LHR 17:35 NCE 20:30

I never understood why AF was not serving this trunk route, leaving it all to BA and LCC. And I think it's one of the best medium-haul route for BA, revenue-wise. Serving it only 1x/day and during less than 2 months is not so great, but at least that's a welcomed beginning.

splflyer

AF seems to consider this flight as part of is leisure summer destinations as it seems to me. LHR has extra slots options within the group as well
There is capacity available during july/august . Destinations like HER DBV /JMK are similar and get extra flights on weekend in shoulder season( may/june ) and have daily flights in summer. KLM has something similar and some destinations seem to do so well that they get daily flights in shoulder season as well ( eg AMS-ALC is daily in summer and 4/5 x a week in winter nowadays...) SPU and DBV seems to do very well as well. enjoy your flight option to NCE

Fabo.sk

Croatia is super popular in the last years, I suppose the boost DBV got from GoT has brought the whole country up. Their reasonably easy entry rules during the last two summers would have helped as well.
Plus, while it's expensive for the "traditional" market, for the western tourist, it's still quite affordable. I can see this trend continuing, and I, myself, am hoping to visit again after last year.

NickB

This brings us back to the old "bases de province" discussion. AF does not normally serve LON-NCE for the same reason that BA does not normally serve MAN-CDG: these are non-hub routes. Yes, LON-NCE works well for BA but it does not follow from this that it would work equally well for AF.

For BA, LHR-NCE is a hub route and they therefore can maintain a fairly high frequency on this route through a mixture of point-to-point and transfer passengers. AF would not have large number of transfer passengers on this route. They might get some transfer pax from partner airlines in LHR (in particular DL and VS US flights) but that would be relatively low numbers and it would be at the cost of cannibalising their own long-haul routes.

With lower frequencies, you severely diminish the attractiveness of the route for business passengers, which means that you are heavily reliant on bucket and spade or F&F passengers, who are much lower yield but then you are competing with the LCCs (including BA's own LGW-NCE operation). There is a healthy dose of comfortable leisure passengers on LON-NCE but these are predominantly UK-based or UK expats, which is a clientele which is more prone to fly BA than AF.

It is significant that AF LHR-NCE flight is summer-only and Y only (and at a not particularly attractive time to boot). AF knows that it simply cannot compete with BA on this route, and especially not with the premium traffic that makes the route particularly worthwhile for BA. The leisure traffic in the summer is big enough for AF to be able to get some of the crumbs falling from the table but it won't be anything other than a very minor player on this route.

San Gottardo

+1

Fully agree. And there is another point: for British Airways this is a flight between its home market where there are many semi-captive customers (frequent flyers, people using BA to other destinations as well, etc) who love traveling to the Cote d'Azur. By contrast, Air France doesn't have that home market in London, and in its "home" market in the Cote d'Azur - where I presume it has a much lower market share than BA has in London - there aren't that many Cote d'Azur residents that want to go to London.

Goldorak

Not an AF route but worth to mention here : DL is restarting JFK-NCE from 27/03.
Aircraft = B764.

DL029 JFK-NCE 19:25-10:00 (D+1)
DL028 NCE-JFK 12:00-15:05

Goldorak

AF is launching (or resuming) the following summer services:
- CDG-Tirana (TIA), Albania
- CDG-Zakinthos (ZTH), Greece
- ORY-ALG
- ORY-TUN
- ORY-PMI

The 3 ORY routes are in addition to the CDG services.

maalloc

For those who followed routes cancellations/reopening during the past two years: have you noticed any schedule updates during which flights were added (not removed) when Covid rules changed for the better?

CDG-HKG has been suspended since forever and only scheduled to restart in July. AMS-HKG is a meager 1-per-week in the mean time at terrible fares.
Meanwhile, HK will re-open borders next week. I'm weighing the pros and cons of waiting a few days to see if AFKL updates their schedule, or go ahead and book with another alliance.

Any data point would be much appreciated.

mlin32

Regarding Hong Kong, I think most airlines, not just AF, have refused to reinstate regular schedules in the near term given the harsh repercussions in case of positive test results => too much risk of the airline being banned suddenly all over again.

maalloc

Many airlines have kept their daily schedule, and play the ban game dynamically.
One can find daily Star Alliance flights from various outstations in France to HKG, and a meager 1 leg/week on ST. The ban situation makes it all more interesting to fly with status in case of IRROPS, but that's only possible if the alliance actually flies there... which it doesn't for now.

Naccache

Hey,

Will be working in Maputo from August, but can't seem to book this flight. Do you know if it was canceled after all?