Air France Reinforces Marseille Offering

Air France has confirmed it will add another three routes from its new Marseille base during the Northern Summer 2012 schedule. The airline inaugurated a host of new services from the regional city at the start of October as part of a revised business focus outside of Paris, aimed at winning back some of the market share it has lost during recent years to its European low-cost rivals.

The French national carrier says traffic from the airport is in line with objectives and has been growing steadily throughout the past month, providing evidence of its economic potential. “These good results reflect intensive efforts and involvement of all ground-based and in-flight teams to ensure the initiative’s success,” said the airline, revealing a 95 per cent on-time performance during the first weeks of service.

To further expand its activities, Air France has revealed it will add three new routes from Marseille in summer 2012, as well as increasing its Rome flights to a twice daily basis. The new destinations comprise Venice, with five weekly flights, Hamburg with four weekly services and Barcelona with two weekly rotations. Ahead of then there have been some minor frequency changes on its current network for the winter with additional weekly flights to Biarritz, Copenhagen and Prague and two additional services per week to Algiers and Nantes, the latter now being served 24 times every week.

A similar network initiative will be introduced in Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice from the spring of 2012 and proposed routes will be announced in the coming months.