easyJet has discontinued two of its flight routes, with the airline axing the services from Bristol and Manchester airports to Paris Orly as of March 28. However, they will be launching a new route between Southampton airport and Orly which will run twice weekly from March 31.
The existing routes from Bristol and Manchester to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport will still run as usual. An easyJet spokesperson told The Sun: “Following a review of the routes, easyJet can confirm that from 28 March it will no longer operate flights from Paris Orly to Manchester and Bristol. We concentrate our efforts on maintaining and developing routes which prove most popular with customers, focusing on offering routes with the greatest demand.
“We continue to serve our customers in Bristol and Manchester with daily flights to Paris Charles de Gaulle, offering connections to over 80 destinations from Bristol and 88 destinations from Manchester across Europe and North Africa.”
Paris Orly, being smaller than Charles de Gaulle and located south of Paris, is often chosen by passengers who’d rather fly to a regional hub than a city centre airport. Travellers say it has a quieter environment, with less risk of getting stuck in traffic, despite being further from the centre of Paris.
The scrapped routes had fares starting from £17.99 each way, with journey times of one hour 45 minutes from Manchester and one hour 25 minutes from Bristol.
easyJet is not the only airline considering cuts to its French routes. Following a tax increase at French airports last autumn, Ryanair revealed plans to scale back routes to regional French airports, although services to Paris are unlikely to be affected.
Ryanair’s chief commercial officer, Jason McGuinness, released a statement saying: “Ryanair is now reviewing its French schedules and expects to cut capacity to/from regional French airports by up to 50 percent from January 2025 if the French government proceeds with its short-sighted plan to triple passenger taxes.”
“The impact of increased passenger taxes will be most damaging for regional France which depends on competitive access costs”, he added.