Transavia France is spreading its wings to regional airports in its home market

Air France has earmarked its Paris Orly Airport-based hybrid carrier Transavia.com to take a larger role in its short/medium-haul network, which necessitates a dramatic shake-up in order to safeguard the sustainability of parent company Air France-KLM. Transavia.com France will launch new routes from its home base at Orly and from three regional French airports - Nantes, Lille-Lesquin and Lyon - as it seeks to defend Air France's dominant position in these airports against the increasing inroads of LCCs.

easyJet has a base at Paris Orly and at Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport while Europe's newest LCC, Volotea, opened a base at Nantes Atlantique Airport on 01-Jun-2012 and has announced route expansions from Lille. If Volotea follows up on its stated intentions, its network will inflate to 20 routes from Nantes and bring the capacity share of LCCs at the airport to over 40%.

Transavia France was founded in Nov-2006 as an offshoot of the Dutch charter/low-cost carrier Transavia Airlines, a wholly owned subsidiary of KLM, to re-enter the leisure market from France to countries in the Mediterranean basin.