Air France is turning a page in its history by leaving Orly

The last flight in the colors of the French company at Orly is a Nice-Paris flight scheduled to land at 21:55 PM, Air France told AFP, which will now only operate there through its low-cost company Transavia.

The Airbus A320 of flight AF6231 landed at 21:59 precisely at Orly, according to data from the flight tracking website FlightRadar24.

The "shuttle", which makes multiple daily connections to Nice, Toulouse and Marseille, will now be operated from Roissy Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport as traffic on domestic routes departing from Orly, south of Paris, has seen a sharp decline, particularly since the Covid pandemic.

"The development of video conferencing, the reduction of business travel on domestic routes and the shift to rail are leading to a structural drop in demand on Air France's point-to-point domestic network," the company explained when it made this decision in 2023.

"First there was a 'train' effect, with the acceleration of the SNCF's TGV service in the 2000s," said Henri Hourcade, Air France-KLM's managing director for France, in an interview with La Tribune on Friday.

Then came Covid and the more systematic use of video conferencing. This "reduced our business clientele, the core target of the shuttle" with a 60% drop in day trips in 2023 compared to 2019, according to him.

Finally, the Climate and Resilience Law in 2021, with the ban on domestic flights when there is a rail alternative in less than 2 hours 30 minutes, has further accentuated the phenomenon.

Air France attempted to respond by reducing frequencies from 25 to 12 on Orly-Toulouse and Orly-Nice, or with new fares and subscriptions, but to no avail.

"We had to face the facts: these flights no longer corresponded to Air France's economic model and our customers' consumption patterns," stressed Henri Hourcade.

movie stars

Air France is thus putting an end to 80 years of history at Orly, for a long time the main airport of the French capital before the construction of Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle at Roissy, northeast of Paris.

The airport has accompanied the rise of air transport, with in 1946 a Douglas DC-4, a four-engine propeller aircraft in the colors of the French company to operate the Paris-New York route.

The arrival of jet aircraft, such as the Caravelle or the legendary 747 "Jumbo Jet", followed, and there are countless photos of movie stars, from Romy Schneider and Alain Delon to Sophia Loren, via Audrey Hepburn or Josephine Baker, at the foot of the gangway, disembarking in Paris or ready to take the plane, particularly in the 60s and 70s.

It was also at this time, in the early 70s, that Orly was finally dedicated to domestic traffic and in 1996, Air France launched "the shuttle", daily connections every hour, or even every half hour.

From now on, they will be carried out from Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Toulouse, Nice and Marseille with respectively 12, 12 and 10 rotations per day.

This refocusing on the Paris-Charles de Gaulle hub concerns all operations except flights to and from Corsica, which is a Public Service Delegation.

However, the Air France group remains present with Transavia, which becomes its reference operator from Paris-Orly.

The low-cost company will inaugurate from Sunday connections between Paris-Orly and Toulouse, Nice and Marseille, offered respectively 8, 8 and 2 times a day.

All flights to overseas destinations - Pointe-à-Pitre, Fort-de-France, Saint-Denis de la Réunion and Cayenne - will also be provided from Paris-Charles de Gaulle.

"This refocusing of operations at Paris-Charles de Gaulle will facilitate international connections and strengthen connectivity to overseas regions and territories," the company said.

Air France finally has a significant maintenance activity at Orly, particularly for the latest generation engines.