Eastern Airways, the UK’s regional airline, today announced the launch of three UK to Paris services in cooperation with Air France. Daily services between East Midlands, Cardiff and Southampton airports to Paris Orly will commence in April.
The East Midlands and Southampton daily services commence on Friday 14th April, with Cardiff from 21st April, offering a year-round travel to the capital city plus onward
Air France connections. This also sees Eastern Airways return to East Midlands as a base carrier adding around 25 crew and engineering roles.
The daily services to Paris Orly will be operated by Eastern Airways and are bookable now at www.easternairways.com and shortly via Air France www.airfrance.co.uk, including onward connectivity, Air France being part of the Air France-KLM Group.
“We are delighted to be entering into this cooperation with Air France and opening up connectivity to Europe’s second biggest city for both business and leisure travelers and restoring direct access year-round to France.” says Roger Hage, Commercial Director, Eastern Airways.
“These first three new UK-France services from East-Midlands, Southampton and Cardiff will initiate the new Eastern Airways and Air France cooperation, developing into a codeshare partnership in the course of this year. Each ensures a sustainable capacity development whereby not only direct access to Paris is offered, but onward connections to a myriad of destinations allowing business users much improved options but also an exciting and ever popular leisure offer, including Disneyland Paris celebrating its 30th anniversary this year to add to the Parisian charm the City is famous for”
Fahmi Mahjoub, General Manager United Kingdom & Ireland, Air France/KLM says “This new cooperation between Air France and Eastern Airways is a very positive move and comes in response to the growing appetite for travel to Paris that we have noticed from all over the United Kingdom. Residents near Cardiff, Southampton and East Midlands, will now be able to fly from their local airport and reach the magnificent capital of France with a direct service, an option that was not available to them before. We look forward to the success of this operation and to enhancing further the cooperation with Eastern Airways in the near future.”
Steve Griffiths, Managing Director at East-Midlands Airport, added, “Today’s news is a very significant development for East Midlands Airport (EMA) and the region we serve. This partnership with Eastern Airways and Air France opens-up the world to our passengers bringing global destinations such as Africa, the Caribbean and South America within one-stop of EMA. Ongoing connectivity via a major European hub has been a strategic aim of this airport for some time and I’m thrilled that this opportunity has arisen. While the majority of our passengers who use EMA do so to easily reach their favourite European holiday destinations, this latest development now means that EMA is the starting point for travel to destinations much further afield.”
“It’s fantastic to welcome back another flag carrier to Cardiff Airport post pandemic and offer people living in Wales another capital city connection which is not only an awe-inspiring destination in itself but also a gateway to onward connections,” says Marc Watkins, Aviation Development Manager for Cardiff Airport.
“Paris-Orly also provides an easy access route to Disneyland Paris, with shuttle buses from the airport to the parks and hotels.”
Christopher Tibbett, Group Head of Airline Relations and Marketing for Southampton Airport, said: “This is a fantastic route announcement from Air France and Eastern Airways offering a great addition to our summer schedule at Southampton in 2023, building on partner airline KLM’s double-daily flights to Amsterdam.
“I’m sure a daily service to Orly, which will deliver quick and convenient connectivity to one of Europe’s greatest destinations, will be very popular with our passengers from Southampton and the wider Hampshire region.”
The new Paris Orly service will be available with fares from £69.99 each-way including taxes and charges, operating on a low-emission 72-seat ATR aircraft, the first to be based at East-Midlands Airport for Eastern Airways. This will complement the Newquay-Cornwall service which launches on Friday 31st March and will act as a catalyst to further new services from the East Midlands hub. Air France will sell seats via an interline agreement developing into full codeshare with Eastern Airways by the end of the year.
See full schedule, noting all times are local to UK & France, Eastern Airways is an independent UK regional airline operating scheduled, charter and specialist air-services in the UK & Europe since 1997, based at Humberside Airport. In the last quarter, Eastern Airways has also launched Humberside-Esbjerg to meet the need of the clean-tech energy and renewables sectors, added frequency on services at Newquay-Cornwall and also sees the return of Humberside-Jersey and Teesside Jersey in the coming weeks
