Nantes Atlantique Airport

Volotea, Europe’s youngest LCC, sees more opportunities in France and plans a base in Bordeaux

Volotea is pursuing its strategy of linking Europe's small and mid-sized cities with direct air services and plans to establish a base at Bordeaux Airport and Palermo in summer 2013. Bordeaux will be the young LCC’s second base in France after Nantes Atlantique Airport. Air France has a market leading capacity share at both Nantes and Bordeaux Airport, but Volotea does not shy away from this formidable force. The young carrier will base two 125-seat Boeing 717s at Bordeaux and will offer 13 routes from the airport. With the Bordeaux base launch, Volotea will operate 45 routes from 14 French airports.

It is unlikely that Air France will sit back and hand over key routes to a much smaller competitor. The French airline is working on a major overhaul of its domestic and European operations, which should make it more fit and dynamic to halt the expansion of low-fare rivals in its market.

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.

European woes force changes for the better at Indian Ocean carriers, with Air Austral the latest

Hardest hit from the European economic situation, aside from the carriers that have collapsed, are far away from continental Europe in the Indian Ocean, which contains the self-proclaimed Vanilla Islands grouping of countries: La Reunion, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles. These nations' carriers are largely dependent on European leisure traffic, which has evaporated in the dual threat of weakening economies and high fuel prices that provide no stimulation to whatever demand is left.

The starkness of the situation has been demonstrated most recently by Air Austral, which over the northern winter will reduce its long-haul network to a single destination and will postpone – or possibly cancel – its order for two Airbus A380s, following it being unable to pay for a new Boeing 777 awaiting delivery. Air Austral is also looking to partner with Air Mauritius to maintain a connection to Australia, a further sign that the situation in Europe is forcing the Vanilla Island carriers to make medium/long-term strategy changes that will finally strengthen them. Etihad Airways earlier this year acquired a stake in Air Seychelles and is now lending management oversight to the Seychelles flag carrier while the region's other carriers have conducted overdue network reviews.