Paris-New York aviation market: Corsair, French bee and others

Two French airlines are to launch Paris Orly to New York Newark services in Jun-2020.

The leisure airline Corsair, sold by TUI Group to Intro Aviation earlier this year, plans to deploy A330-900neos on the route from Sep-2020. The LCC French bee will deploy A350-900s. Both are long haul specialists, but neither currently operates to New York.

Since these plans were announced, another leisure focused French airline that had long been operating between Paris and New York went into receivership: XL Airways France, which operated from Paris CDG to Newark, was the fifth largest of eight airlines on the city pair before hitting financial difficulties.

Paris-New York is the biggest intercontinental city pair by seats from continental Europe and Paris CDG-New York JFK is the largest intercontinental airport pair by seats from continental Europe. Paris-New York has only 44% of London-New York's annual seats in 2019, but it has grown faster since 2012. The Air France/Delta JV's share is higher than the British Airways/American JV's share on London-New York but this is falling, and there are more competing airlines.

Corsair and French bee will follow three other new entrants on Paris-New York since 2015: Norwegian, LEVEL and (briefly) Primera Air.