Air France has a large presence in New York, with a minimum of four daily frequencies between New York JFK and Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport. In addition to that there are flights between the two cities on their joint venture partner, Delta, out of both JFK and Newark. Air France has just announced that…
Continue reading: Air France Launching New York JFK To Paris Orly Flight
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Why would you call BA OpenSkies a "low cost subsidiary"?
They may not have the hottest newest business product but they have quite a premium configuration (and used to be all business at one point) and have lie-flat seats.
Is Charles de Gaulle too crowded or something? I totally see why leisure dest are served out of LGW and not LHR, but is CDG slot-restricted as well? Or is it because they want to save money by flying out of ORY?
One of the primary benefits of Orly vs CDG is simply that it's quicker to get to the city. Sorta like LGA vs JFK, DCA vs IAD, and so on.
That's especially true if you're talking rush-hour traffic from CDG vs ORY. On the RER-B, it's a bit closer, but can really depend on how well you time the ORLY VAL connection.
Finally, the ease of use at Orly is identical to that of DCA - super efficient and very quick from curb to plane, never more than a few hundred meter walk. Whereas CDG, especially actually for Air France, can be a massive trek from curb to gate depending on terminal (less so in T1 with *A, but that's only if you understand the airport well).
(From someone living in Paris who travels every week)
^^^Agreed. Orly is an easy airport. In addition, if you don't have priority security screening CDG can be hellish, while I've always found Orly to be pretty manageable. Even when I'm not flying SkyTeam I can usually still get away with using my Delta FF card through the SkyPriority lane. Not a nice airport, but not having to disembark, walk, walk, take the train, walk, walk...wait for bags AND THEN exit...that'll be nice.
No ORY is more crowded than CDG... by law.
Even with 3 runways (only 2 at LHR), ORY is authorised not to go further 250 000 take-offs and landings on a yearly basis, so basically only 20% of the LHR slots.
AF serves about 27 domestic destinations in ORY, mainly metropolitan ones. So that's not the same type of activity for BA at LGW. In the past AF even served LRH (La Rochelle) from ORY.
AF has a flight to TLS every 15 minutes in the morning from ORY arriving and departing, so 4 taking-off and 4 landing per hour.
So ORY is more practical for a lot people from the regions.
But all of that is not why AF opens this route. I think AF wants to remind the competitors who is the main carrier on the New-York Paris route. And keep its market share.
Lafayette- BA (Open skies): we are coming!
Lafayette- Norwegian: we are coming!
Norwegian is said to open too a NY-ORY route or has a plan for that!
And the flight will depart from the same ORY Hall 3 gates where from BA departs.
This is a "we are not giving the market to the competitors", we fight.
AF is shrinking a little bit on long-haul the next years: so it has the people (too much already) and the planes for that.
And it may prove more profitable than going to Kuala-Lumpur.
So nothing about ORY lower cost base: we fight against the competition right now and the future one.
Let's face it it's easier to fly to many french regional airport on BA and LH than on AF from the US, now let's hope they do put on a real business lounge I am sure that all the local commuter will appreciate it and let's remember that many flight for western and north africa depart from orly too on different airline might be a way to easily connect between these place and the US