A timid arrival for Vueling on French domestic routesBut it is symbolic. The low-cost subsidiary - or hybrid, depending on your sensibilities - has just announced the launch of three domestic routes from Orly. Brest, Montpellier and Marseille will each have two flights a week, on Fridays and Sundays. A total of 39,000 seats for the entire IATA winter season. The introductory price for a single ticket starts at €29.
It will kick off on 16 October. Flight times will be late afternoon or early evening for all three routes. Vueling is primarily targeting leisure travellers, although business travellers could also benefit on Sunday evenings or Friday evenings for return flights to the capital.
However, Vueling remains essentially an international airline, linking Barcelona to six French cities. From Paris-Orly, the airline offered twenty destinations this summer, mainly to Spain and Italy.
Easyjet and Volotea dominate domestic low-cost routes
Vueling is entering a market where other low-cost carriers are already thriving. The two dominant low-cost carriers on domestic routes are Easyjet and Volotea.. Easyjet flies from Paris CDG and Orly to Corsica, Biarritz, Nice and Toulouse. But it is above all in the regions that the carrier offers a dense network of domestic flights. Easyjet serves 15 airports in France. Basel-Mulhouse and Lyon were the star performers this summer, with flights to nine other cities. This was followed by Nice and Toulouse (eight destinations), Nantes (six destinations), Bordeaux (five destinations) and Lille (four destinations).
Specialising in services to secondary towns, Volotea is present at 18 regional airports. The carrier has the densest domestic network from Strasbourg, serving nine destinations during the summer. Nantes is also linked to eight cities, Toulouse to seven, Brest to five destinations, while Marseille and Nice each have four domestic routes.
While Transavia is currently mainly present in Nantes with four domestic routes -Marseille, Montpellier, Nice and Toulouse- thehe transfer of Air France flights to Orly and of HOP! Air France in the coming weeks will enable the Air France-KLM subsidiary to become the leading low-cost operator. on domestic routes. Transavia is expected to have a high level of activity at Orly and Lyon.
And finally.., Ryanair offers French domestic flights, but its network has been heavily pruned with covid. The company also offers routes from Marseille to Brest and Tours, from Nantes to Nîmes and from Beauvais to Figari.
Low-cost on course for 50% market share
Low-cost passenger traffic on domestic routes is likely to exceed the 50% mark in 2021. (if the normalisation of aviation activities proves to be substantial). In 2019, according to DGAC statistics, this market share on domestic flights amounted to 45.9%7.47 million passengers.
Easyjet took the lion's share with 5.26 million passengers, followed by Volotea with 1.5 million and Ryanair with 0.71 million. Given the new distribution of domestic traffic within the Air France group, Transavia's market share is set to soar. In 2019, according to the DGAC, the carrier accounted for just 1,100 domestic passengers!
