Flight Friday: French Carriers Show Impact Of Short Domestic Flight Ban

On the eve of the 2025 edition of the Paris Air Show, this week’s Flight Friday looks at how the top four French passenger operators, by number of flights (cycles), have been operating since the previous edition of the Paris Air Show back in 2023.

As expected, Air France is clearly the dominant operator, with as many monthly cycles as the other three listed operators combined. However, Air France’s May 2025 figure is down over 10% compared to May 2019. Part of this reason is the shift of some of its routes over to Transavia France, which is part of the Air France-KLM Group. And some of it is potentially because of France’s ban on short domestic flights where the same journey can be completed by train in less than two-and-a-half hours. This significant national environmental policy came into effect in May 2023.

Transavia France is next on the list. With almost 10,000 flights in May 2025, Transavia France is entering its peak summer season. With the airline’s ongoing fleet additions and replacements of Boeing 737NGs to Airbus A320neos, Transavia France’s May 2025 flights are already up 16% compared to 12 months prior.

HOP!’s utilization has remained reasonably consistent with where it was a year ago. However, when compared to 2019, utilization is down by a third. Again, this is a carrier impacted by the French domestic flight ban policy, which has led to a reduction of in-service fleet from over 70 aircraft in May 2019 to around half that number in 2025. HOP! has also reduced its fleet diversity and is now solely concentrating on its Embraer ERJ fleet.

Air Corsica rounds out this analysis and has remained consistent, with utilization up just over 3% in May 2025 compared to May 2019. It operates a fleet that is virtually the same as it was in 2019, though it has since swapped some A320ceos for A320neos and swapped some of the smaller ATR 42s and older ATR 72s for the latest version of the ATR 72, making it a more sustainable operator with a greener, more modern fleet.

This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization database.