Toulouse-Blagnac a recorded over 7.8 million passengers in 2023, up 11%. But this figure is still almost 19% less than 2019 who recorded 9.6 million passengers. Bruno Balerdi explains why...
Toulouse airport is experiencing a slower recovery than other French airports. What are the factors holding back a return to stronger growth?
Bruno Balerdi - The Covid crisis has profoundly transformed traffic at Toulouse airport. It is still affecting domestic traffic which has not regained its pre-pandemic momentum. There are many reasons for the 'breakdown' in domestic passenger traffic. Before the crisis, domestic and international traffic were on an equal footing. But theinternational accounted for 57% of market share last year, a historically high figure.
In 2023, domestic traffic will have recovered only 70% of its 2019 level, compared with 93% for international traffic. This trend is largely due to the lower demand on the Toulouse-Paris route. Last year 2.2 million passengers compared with 3.2 million in 2019. We are therefore penalised by this missing million.
How do you explain such a drop on the Toulouse-Paris route?
Bruno Balerdi - Business passengers have adopted new travel practices. Videoconferencing is a long-term solution. At the same time, there has been a shift towards rail travel. It was thought that the arrival of TGV in 2032 would protect us from a drop in traffic until then. In fact, we feel an attrition effect of the market since last year. Air France has drastically reduced the number of its frequencies and air fares are now very high. Optimising frequencies and high fares are having a negative impact on demand. In fact, many business travellers now spend three days in Paris, which makes a train journey more attractive despite the 4.5 hour journey time. By contrast, cross-border routes to Lyon, Nantes and Nice are performing well.. Traffic is also holding up well in Lille, Rennes and Strasbourg.
What are Toulouse Airport's main international successes in 2023?
Bruno Balerdi - The expansion of intercontinental traffic is the great success of 2023. The arrival of Air Canada and Qatar Airways has boosted international demand. With 5 flights a week throughout the year, the Toulouse-Montréal opens the doors not only to Canada, but also to the United States and the Caribbean. We can see a high proportion of transit traffic of the 80,000 passengers on this route. With the flight of DohaToulouse is open to the rest of the world.East Africa and Asia. Further flights on the intercontinental route are expected in the future. I think that by 2027, we should see routes to the United States operated by Boeing 737MAX., ideal size for a service from Toulouse. Emirates has also expressed an interest in Toulouse. But the airline has exhausted its traffic rights to France...
How is demand developing in Europe?
Bruno Balerdi - It is highly dependent on demand for leisure travel. The countries most popular with our passengers are Spain, Greece, Italy and Morocco. In short, the whole Mediterranean basin. Our strategy is to push traffic towards Northern and Central Europe. This is bearing fruit. This summer we have Norwegian with flights to Copenhagen, while Berlin is back with Easyjet. We believe that there are real opportunities for developing routes to Budapest, Prague and Vienna.
What improvements have been made to the passenger service?
Bruno Balerdi - In 2018we have created a a completely new route through the airport which included additional services for businessmen such as thehotel NHA baggage packing service and work areas. Today we're looking at create a new lounge in the international zone for our non-Schengen flights. We're thinking about optimising the boarding lounges. This will give us greater agility in handling Schengen and non-Schengen flights.
We also did a lot of work new forms of mobility. There's an electric recharging point for cars and we've laid out a bus hub. Blagnac offers connections to Andorra, while Flixbus provides direct links to Spain, Western France, Lyon, Occitania, Spain and even Italy! Blagnac also welcomes Blablacar vehicles.
How do people feel about their airport today?
Bruno Balerdi - We are fortunate that the local population recognises the merits of the airporta symbol of an economy based largely on aeronautics. We are in fact a airport well integrated into its territoryIt is working hard to reduce its environmental impact and is, according to ACI Europe (Airports Association International), one of the world's leading airports, France's favourite airport for passengers.
